10 ms·

Medium Raises $57M

122 points by ssclafani 11y ago

halcyondaze 11y ago
"On what it will do with the money? Doyle says it will go to making Medium “the dominant pipeline for connecting quality content and conversation,” which is pretty broad." - The content is decent, but the conversation aspect of Medium has a long, long way to go before it comes close to many other platforms.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  I agree. The ability to discuss paragraphs individually is fun but it seems the unwritten rule is to keep discussion there to a minimum or else it clutters your work.
irl_zebra 11y ago
It's an interesting service, though I can't personally see putting that much of my sweat into 2,000 word blog posts that I don't own. But what is their game plan to monetize?
- Karunamon 11y ago
  I don't know who started this meme that you don't own content that you put on Medium, but it's totally wrong: https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e... You own the rights to the content you post on Medium. We don’t claim ownership over any of it. However, by posting or transferring content to Medium, you give us permission to use your content solely to do the things we need to do to provide Medium Services, including, without limitation, storing, displaying, reproducing, and distributing your content. This may include promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, distribution, or publication. This is identical to the ToS for any hosted blogging service such as Blogger or Wordpress - you have to give them a license to your words for the site to do their job.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    True, and practically speaking it's pretty standard from what I've seen in writing fields. Very similar to music such as on Soundcloud. I think the only 'hangup' that might be in the conditions would be "without limitation" insofar as when does "the things we need to do to provide Medium Services" conflict with the content producer being compensated. As in, if "partner companies" and Medium are engaged in some compensation / revenue undertaking, at what point does an author on the platform have some "say" in the way the content gets used...e.g. a person posts a beautiful poem, Medium can print that poem in an ad in the New York Times to self-promote, and the author seemingly gets nothing, which doesn't seem appropriate. Not saying that's the intent or anything, but I think healthy suspicion is helpful to all parties for clarity.
    - mst 11y ago
      (riffing on your comments, not disagreeing) I'm looking at that and thinking the way they've phrased it means that 'without limitation' is required to avoid exposing themselves to lawsuits over details, and 'solely' is meant as their promise to the users. So ... healthy suspicion good, but I feel like they've tried to set it up so that they can only be sued for violating the letter of the agreement, but can (and expect to) be publically excoriated for violating the spirit. Whether they'll continue to live up to these ideals over time is (aaand we're back to healthy suspicion :) inevitably an open question, but I think the intent is to make it clear that those ideals do exist now in a way that allows us to hold them to it later.
      - 6stringmerc 11y ago
        Excellent point, and thanks for elaborating on the "spirit" component as it relates to the phrasing. I'm on board with you in that it's a functional way of doing business, legally speaking, but could benefit from public oversight (e.g. reputation).
  - mbrutsch 11y ago
    "do their job" Why is > This may include promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, distribution, or publication. "doing their job"? What if I do not want them to do that with my content? Have I ceded my control? Can I tell them not to do so?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
rememberlenny 11y ago
Techcrunch and their Medium post have conflicting numbers. Medium: 57M Techcrunch: 54M Edit: Thanks for updating the title
lemiant 11y ago
What are they gonna do with all that money? ...change the company name to Large?
- dublinben 11y ago
  Start paying their writers?
  - throwaway859876 11y ago
    Nah, this is the "sharing" economy. The owners get paid, the proles get "work experience."
  - GCA10 11y ago
    Doesn't the arrow of progress actually point the other way? If the site gets big enough, they can charge writers for the privilege of being published there.
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      LiveJournal all over.
  - jjaredsimpson 11y ago
    Why pay a class of people so desperate to give away their labor.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Premium Themes. Sadly, I'm only half joking.
pnathan 11y ago
I'd rather use Dreamwidth.
temuze 11y ago
Step 1: Found successful startup (Blogger). Sell four years later to Google. Step 2: Wait ten years. Then, repeat step 1 with similar idea but different branding (Medium). At this rate, we have about 6 years until Ev does step 2 for Twitter. Maybe it'll be called Tiny :)
- byoung2 11y ago
  I've noticed this same pattern with other founders, notably Dennis Crowley with Dodgeball (location-based social network founded in 2000, sold to Google in 2005) and Foursquare (location based social network with different branding).
  - temuze 11y ago
    It's not that surprising if you think about it. Some companies end too early because the technology or capital wasn't there to let it get to its full potential. Also, those founders tend to be the people who understand the space the best because they're the ones with the most experience.
  - seiji 11y ago
    Happens with Cisco all the time too. Cisco acquires startup Y, founders vest for 4 years, founders leave Cisco and create Y+1, Cisco acquires Y+1, .... It helps to get re-acquired once you have all the existing connections and the acquiring company knows you're not snake oil and aren't screwing them over. There have been multiple Google->Startup->Google loops as well, but many of those are an acquihire-as-safety-net when the too hyped startup by too eager employees falls flat on its face.
  - DannoHung 11y ago
    To be fair to him, Google drove Dodgeball straight into the ground. To be mean to him: Deciding to split Foursquare into Yelp-lite and a shitty social network was a terrible, terrible idea.
    - austenallred 11y ago
gukov 11y ago
I wonder if the revamped Facebook Notes made Medium act quicker.
- itsyogesh 11y ago
  I was actually thinking about this. With facebook upping their UI/UX game for notes, it can strike as a good competition, if it catches on. Lets see how it works out.
- jug 11y ago
  The new Facebook Notes rocks. It's not as feature rich as Medium but the user connections are, of course with over a billion users, incredible and unmatched.
PretzelFisch 11y ago
So Medium is Blogger meets Twitter. What is the monetization strategy?
lbotos 11y ago
Anyone have any ideas how long this will keep them going without having the start really monetizing? IMO, I think it's _insane_ that in 2015 companies can be given so much cash with a hope that they can become profitable.
- GrinningFool 11y ago
  The hope is probably that they can be bought up for profit, as opposed to being a profitable company in the long term. That's what comprises a business model in startup land. And let's be honest - it works enough of the time that people keep doing it.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Does anybody here post regularly on Medium? Can anyone name off the top of their heads their favorite writers on Medium? Would anybody pay for Medium? I like Medium as a platform but there doesn't seem to be much beyond the occasional interesting essay or startup humblebrag puff piece about why culture is more than free donuts or whatever. My problem with Medium is there is no way of establishing a reputation for quality. If everyone can post there then you're gonna run into some garbage, no matter what the sorting algorithm says are the "hot" stories. So without site wide quality control all it'll take are a few bad articles to bring down the perceived average quality. So then what's in it for the writers? Build up an audience on a convenient, erm, Medium, then...leave? How else will they make money?
- NullCharacter 11y ago
  I was a huge fan of /war-is-boring (and could name a bunch of authors), but they moved to their own dedicated site with crappy liveleak-esque ads. C'est la vie.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    Hah, I'm glad you mentioned War-is-boring because they're literally the only section I remembered by name and, same, once they were off doing their own thing, I didn't follow. I imagine we're not the only ones.
- minimaxir 11y ago
  Medium is for people who think they are insightful because they see other people using Medium, but they actually aren't insightful at all. That isn't sardony. There are many startups/VCs who use Medium solely because they want to be "thought-leaders" unironically. As a result, the quality of Medium posts is highly variable.
- austenallred 11y ago
  I can't think of anyone I religiously read on Medium, but I find interesting and insightful stuff that happens to have been written on Medium all the time. Actually, I think that's kind of the point.
api 11y ago
It's really a brilliant model: a magazine with unpaid writers. Get everyone to write high quality articles for nothing, then curate and monetize.
- jqm 11y ago
  "high quality articles" appears to be the challenge here....
symlinkk 11y ago
It's ridiculous how much of a bubble the web is in right now. Do you really think they well EVER earn $57 million back? In the age of ad blockers, ad networks are dying. How else will they monetize? Only time will tell. Also, why is Medium so popular? It really doesn't have anything new or different than any blogging platform before it...almost any of the readers of HN could probably create a similar service if we wanted to, so why is Medium so popular? Maybe I'm just really out of touch but I just don't see the value in these websites. Sure they're popular now but for how long? Honestly, how much of their popularity is just because it's the "cool" "new" place to post on, and because everyone else is doing it so I should too?
- orthoganol 11y ago
  > why is Medium so popular? It's not. I only have heard about it b/c of the YC connection, reading articles here posted from Medium.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    It's popular in the Twitterverse as the go-to longform blog platform for people without a personally hosted blog who also want to avoid Tumblr. A big reason for that is probably because a Twitter co-founder created it. ;) I heard about it before I even browsed HN or new what YC was. Mostly I read the "War is Boring" articles, specifically by David Axe.
    - prawn 11y ago
      One strange thing about the Medium-Twitter link is that most Medium stories I come across can't actually be posted on Twitter via the Twitter client for OSX because the @ symbol in the URL breaks. And the OSX client is how I mostly interact with Twitter.
      - Nadya 11y ago
        If you click "Share" you should be able to share on Twitter and it gives you a Twitter-friendly URL to use.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Sometimes I get the feeling there is a business model in there somewhere trying to get out. Something that replaces magazines. I don't know if medium is it, certainly Blogger and Tumblr weren't, or the collection of things that is AOL these days. Somehow a go-to-market strategy involving authors, editors, advertisers, and readers which gives everyone a really great experience. It is a tough nut to crack though.
dharma1 11y ago
pretty good for good looking contenteditable
zxcvvcxz 11y ago
Can someone explain why blog website needs 82M?
brianstorms 11y ago
I read today that the estimated valuation of Medium is $400 million. I find that astounding. Bear in mind that Bezos bought The Washington Post, no slouch in the journalism world, for $250 million not too long ago. How big is Medium's traffic? Monthly uniques? Ad revenue? Or any revenue? Where is the there there?
on_ 11y ago
Twitter is starting to look something like Reuters real-time reporting network and event notifications. It basically replaces the headlines of the newspaper people used to see while walking down the street. It is a notification service which makes it a great platform. Medium is trying to be the actual body paragraph of the newspaper[0]. They seek to provide content curation, search and monetization. They provide the analysis of the interesting topics you see on twitter. Twitter is diverse with people like Kim Kardashian to Noam Chomsky. Medium will let these people explain themselves in long form and introduce you to similar thinkers. For Noam Chomsky that might be other linguists or libertarians and for Kim Kardashian it might be a piece of cardboard, or goldfish. I don't know what the strategy is, but I would say 20/80 odds they crack the code. Long odds, but better than most start ups face. They need to: * Find a way to pay users for content, or create a great incentive for them to continue delivering high quality content to them for free. * Find a way to organize and display the content. * Get people to pay for it. Obviously a tall order. They are trying to be the people who figure out how to monetize without advertising traffic. I have no idea what they told investors, and frankly Ev Williams could say he was remaking Pets.com and he would get funded, but I suspect they have an idea for monetization. [0] A newspaper was sort of link an internet website. It was made of something called paper and was delivered by actual people to your door. People used to use their hands to scroll through it. Push notifications and updates took ~24 hours to reach newspapers. Not much else is known about these ancient artifacts.
- mst 11y ago
  > They are trying to be the people who figure out how to monetize without advertising traffic. While I remain skeptical of this idea, I really really want it to be true.
kinkora 11y ago
honest question: why does medium need to raise so much money? Given that ev is behind it, I would imagine he has the financial resources to fund it himself AND more importantly, he has the connections within the silicon valley Illuminati (i.e. VCs, Tech Journalist, CEOs of various tech companies).
forrestthewoods 11y ago
I still fucking hate Medium. Why? It's bad for content creators. Why? Because url previews on HN/Reddit/etc say medium.com. Every damn medium.com link looks the same as others. No way to build your brand or identity. For the longest time the author's name wasn't even visible until the very teeny bottom. I'm pro-author and pro-content creator. I don't believe that Medium is. They're just pro-Medium. Our interests are not aligned. Which is a shame.
julianz 11y ago
With 57 million bucks you think they might be able to make it so all the text doesn't jump to the side when you click the page? That drives me nuts.
nstart 11y ago
Could they be prepping for the war against ads and trackers? There's been a bit of talk about having a central paywall of sorts. One where I put money into a service and that service is responsible for distributing the money to the sites that I visit (that have signed up with said paywall service). Kind of like what Google has as an alternative to seeing its ads (can't recall the name). Medium would be an ideal platform for this. Put a monthly fee into medium (maybe you choose how much), or just give your credit card and set a cap on how much you can spend per month, and then when you visit posts on medium, the authors get paid out based on visits and percentage read (or something similar). That could have the potential to upend the indie blogger market right now. They'd have distribution, managed systems, and would get paid for their work.
ogezi 11y ago
This is probably one of the best news sites out there.
jug 11y ago
I miss international support on Medium. Or maybe recognition? But also in terms of features, like national "communities" or filters. I've thought about posting there but recognize that brand as one aimed for quality long form posts, but can't be assed to write all that in English. :( I want to be able to visit a medium.com/ger, medium.com/swe, etc. It's seemingly not even a topic brought up there in a FAQ or so. Funny, since I think it would open up many new markets.

122 points by ssclafani 11y ago

"On what it will do with the money? Doyle says it will go to making Medium “the dominant pipeline for connecting quality content and conversation,” which is pretty broad." - The content is decent, but the conversation aspect of Medium has a long, long way to go before it comes close to many other platforms.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I agree. The ability to discuss paragraphs individually is fun but it seems the unwritten rule is to keep discussion there to a minimum or else it clutters your work.

irl_zebra 11y ago

It's an interesting service, though I can't personally see putting that much of my sweat into 2,000 word blog posts that I don't own. But what is their game plan to monetize?

Karunamon 11y ago
I don't know who started this meme that you don't own content that you put on Medium, but it's totally wrong: https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e... You own the rights to the content you post on Medium. We don’t claim ownership over any of it. However, by posting or transferring content to Medium, you give us permission to use your content solely to do the things we need to do to provide Medium Services, including, without limitation, storing, displaying, reproducing, and distributing your content. This may include promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, distribution, or publication. This is identical to the ToS for any hosted blogging service such as Blogger or Wordpress - you have to give them a license to your words for the site to do their job.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  True, and practically speaking it's pretty standard from what I've seen in writing fields. Very similar to music such as on Soundcloud. I think the only 'hangup' that might be in the conditions would be "without limitation" insofar as when does "the things we need to do to provide Medium Services" conflict with the content producer being compensated. As in, if "partner companies" and Medium are engaged in some compensation / revenue undertaking, at what point does an author on the platform have some "say" in the way the content gets used...e.g. a person posts a beautiful poem, Medium can print that poem in an ad in the New York Times to self-promote, and the author seemingly gets nothing, which doesn't seem appropriate. Not saying that's the intent or anything, but I think healthy suspicion is helpful to all parties for clarity.
  - mst 11y ago
    (riffing on your comments, not disagreeing) I'm looking at that and thinking the way they've phrased it means that 'without limitation' is required to avoid exposing themselves to lawsuits over details, and 'solely' is meant as their promise to the users. So ... healthy suspicion good, but I feel like they've tried to set it up so that they can only be sued for violating the letter of the agreement, but can (and expect to) be publically excoriated for violating the spirit. Whether they'll continue to live up to these ideals over time is (aaand we're back to healthy suspicion :) inevitably an open question, but I think the intent is to make it clear that those ideals do exist now in a way that allows us to hold them to it later.
    - 6stringmerc 11y ago
      Excellent point, and thanks for elaborating on the "spirit" component as it relates to the phrasing. I'm on board with you in that it's a functional way of doing business, legally speaking, but could benefit from public oversight (e.g. reputation).
- mbrutsch 11y ago
  "do their job" Why is > This may include promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, distribution, or publication. "doing their job"? What if I do not want them to do that with my content? Have I ceded my control? Can I tell them not to do so?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

rememberlenny 11y ago

Techcrunch and their Medium post have conflicting numbers. Medium: 57M Techcrunch: 54M Edit: Thanks for updating the title

lemiant 11y ago

What are they gonna do with all that money? ...change the company name to Large?

dublinben 11y ago
Start paying their writers?
- throwaway859876 11y ago
  Nah, this is the "sharing" economy. The owners get paid, the proles get "work experience."
- GCA10 11y ago
  Doesn't the arrow of progress actually point the other way? If the site gets big enough, they can charge writers for the privilege of being published there.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    LiveJournal all over.
- jjaredsimpson 11y ago
  Why pay a class of people so desperate to give away their labor.
notahacker 11y ago
Premium Themes. Sadly, I'm only half joking.

pnathan 11y ago

I'd rather use Dreamwidth.

temuze 11y ago

Step 1: Found successful startup (Blogger). Sell four years later to Google. Step 2: Wait ten years. Then, repeat step 1 with similar idea but different branding (Medium). At this rate, we have about 6 years until Ev does step 2 for Twitter. Maybe it'll be called Tiny :)

byoung2 11y ago
I've noticed this same pattern with other founders, notably Dennis Crowley with Dodgeball (location-based social network founded in 2000, sold to Google in 2005) and Foursquare (location based social network with different branding).
- temuze 11y ago
  It's not that surprising if you think about it. Some companies end too early because the technology or capital wasn't there to let it get to its full potential. Also, those founders tend to be the people who understand the space the best because they're the ones with the most experience.
- seiji 11y ago
  Happens with Cisco all the time too. Cisco acquires startup Y, founders vest for 4 years, founders leave Cisco and create Y+1, Cisco acquires Y+1, .... It helps to get re-acquired once you have all the existing connections and the acquiring company knows you're not snake oil and aren't screwing them over. There have been multiple Google->Startup->Google loops as well, but many of those are an acquihire-as-safety-net when the too hyped startup by too eager employees falls flat on its face.
- DannoHung 11y ago
  To be fair to him, Google drove Dodgeball straight into the ground. To be mean to him: Deciding to split Foursquare into Yelp-lite and a shitty social network was a terrible, terrible idea.
  - austenallred 11y ago

gukov 11y ago

I wonder if the revamped Facebook Notes made Medium act quicker.

itsyogesh 11y ago
I was actually thinking about this. With facebook upping their UI/UX game for notes, it can strike as a good competition, if it catches on. Lets see how it works out.
jug 11y ago
The new Facebook Notes rocks. It's not as feature rich as Medium but the user connections are, of course with over a billion users, incredible and unmatched.

PretzelFisch 11y ago

So Medium is Blogger meets Twitter. What is the monetization strategy?

lbotos 11y ago

Anyone have any ideas how long this will keep them going without having the start really monetizing? IMO, I think it's _insane_ that in 2015 companies can be given so much cash with a hope that they can become profitable.

GrinningFool 11y ago
The hope is probably that they can be bought up for profit, as opposed to being a profitable company in the long term. That's what comprises a business model in startup land. And let's be honest - it works enough of the time that people keep doing it.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

Does anybody here post regularly on Medium? Can anyone name off the top of their heads their favorite writers on Medium? Would anybody pay for Medium? I like Medium as a platform but there doesn't seem to be much beyond the occasional interesting essay or startup humblebrag puff piece about why culture is more than free donuts or whatever. My problem with Medium is there is no way of establishing a reputation for quality. If everyone can post there then you're gonna run into some garbage, no matter what the sorting algorithm says are the "hot" stories. So without site wide quality control all it'll take are a few bad articles to bring down the perceived average quality. So then what's in it for the writers? Build up an audience on a convenient, erm, Medium, then...leave? How else will they make money?

NullCharacter 11y ago
I was a huge fan of /war-is-boring (and could name a bunch of authors), but they moved to their own dedicated site with crappy liveleak-esque ads. C'est la vie.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Hah, I'm glad you mentioned War-is-boring because they're literally the only section I remembered by name and, same, once they were off doing their own thing, I didn't follow. I imagine we're not the only ones.
minimaxir 11y ago
Medium is for people who think they are insightful because they see other people using Medium, but they actually aren't insightful at all. That isn't sardony. There are many startups/VCs who use Medium solely because they want to be "thought-leaders" unironically. As a result, the quality of Medium posts is highly variable.
austenallred 11y ago
I can't think of anyone I religiously read on Medium, but I find interesting and insightful stuff that happens to have been written on Medium all the time. Actually, I think that's kind of the point.

api 11y ago

It's really a brilliant model: a magazine with unpaid writers. Get everyone to write high quality articles for nothing, then curate and monetize.

jqm 11y ago
"high quality articles" appears to be the challenge here....

symlinkk 11y ago

It's ridiculous how much of a bubble the web is in right now. Do you really think they well EVER earn $57 million back? In the age of ad blockers, ad networks are dying. How else will they monetize? Only time will tell. Also, why is Medium so popular? It really doesn't have anything new or different than any blogging platform before it...almost any of the readers of HN could probably create a similar service if we wanted to, so why is Medium so popular? Maybe I'm just really out of touch but I just don't see the value in these websites. Sure they're popular now but for how long? Honestly, how much of their popularity is just because it's the "cool" "new" place to post on, and because everyone else is doing it so I should too?

orthoganol 11y ago
> why is Medium so popular? It's not. I only have heard about it b/c of the YC connection, reading articles here posted from Medium.
- Nadya 11y ago
  It's popular in the Twitterverse as the go-to longform blog platform for people without a personally hosted blog who also want to avoid Tumblr. A big reason for that is probably because a Twitter co-founder created it. ;) I heard about it before I even browsed HN or new what YC was. Mostly I read the "War is Boring" articles, specifically by David Axe.
  - prawn 11y ago
    One strange thing about the Medium-Twitter link is that most Medium stories I come across can't actually be posted on Twitter via the Twitter client for OSX because the @ symbol in the URL breaks. And the OSX client is how I mostly interact with Twitter.
    - Nadya 11y ago
      If you click "Share" you should be able to share on Twitter and it gives you a Twitter-friendly URL to use.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Sometimes I get the feeling there is a business model in there somewhere trying to get out. Something that replaces magazines. I don't know if medium is it, certainly Blogger and Tumblr weren't, or the collection of things that is AOL these days. Somehow a go-to-market strategy involving authors, editors, advertisers, and readers which gives everyone a really great experience. It is a tough nut to crack though.

dharma1 11y ago

pretty good for good looking contenteditable

zxcvvcxz 11y ago

Can someone explain why blog website needs 82M?

brianstorms 11y ago

I read today that the estimated valuation of Medium is $400 million. I find that astounding. Bear in mind that Bezos bought The Washington Post, no slouch in the journalism world, for $250 million not too long ago. How big is Medium's traffic? Monthly uniques? Ad revenue? Or any revenue? Where is the there there?

on_ 11y ago

Twitter is starting to look something like Reuters real-time reporting network and event notifications. It basically replaces the headlines of the newspaper people used to see while walking down the street. It is a notification service which makes it a great platform. Medium is trying to be the actual body paragraph of the newspaper[0]. They seek to provide content curation, search and monetization. They provide the analysis of the interesting topics you see on twitter. Twitter is diverse with people like Kim Kardashian to Noam Chomsky. Medium will let these people explain themselves in long form and introduce you to similar thinkers. For Noam Chomsky that might be other linguists or libertarians and for Kim Kardashian it might be a piece of cardboard, or goldfish. I don't know what the strategy is, but I would say 20/80 odds they crack the code. Long odds, but better than most start ups face. They need to: * Find a way to pay users for content, or create a great incentive for them to continue delivering high quality content to them for free. * Find a way to organize and display the content. * Get people to pay for it. Obviously a tall order. They are trying to be the people who figure out how to monetize without advertising traffic. I have no idea what they told investors, and frankly Ev Williams could say he was remaking Pets.com and he would get funded, but I suspect they have an idea for monetization. [0] A newspaper was sort of link an internet website. It was made of something called paper and was delivered by actual people to your door. People used to use their hands to scroll through it. Push notifications and updates took ~24 hours to reach newspapers. Not much else is known about these ancient artifacts.

mst 11y ago
> They are trying to be the people who figure out how to monetize without advertising traffic. While I remain skeptical of this idea, I really really want it to be true.

kinkora 11y ago

honest question: why does medium need to raise so much money? Given that ev is behind it, I would imagine he has the financial resources to fund it himself AND more importantly, he has the connections within the silicon valley Illuminati (i.e. VCs, Tech Journalist, CEOs of various tech companies).

forrestthewoods 11y ago

I still fucking hate Medium. Why? It's bad for content creators. Why? Because url previews on HN/Reddit/etc say medium.com. Every damn medium.com link looks the same as others. No way to build your brand or identity. For the longest time the author's name wasn't even visible until the very teeny bottom. I'm pro-author and pro-content creator. I don't believe that Medium is. They're just pro-Medium. Our interests are not aligned. Which is a shame.

julianz 11y ago

With 57 million bucks you think they might be able to make it so all the text doesn't jump to the side when you click the page? That drives me nuts.

nstart 11y ago

Could they be prepping for the war against ads and trackers? There's been a bit of talk about having a central paywall of sorts. One where I put money into a service and that service is responsible for distributing the money to the sites that I visit (that have signed up with said paywall service). Kind of like what Google has as an alternative to seeing its ads (can't recall the name). Medium would be an ideal platform for this. Put a monthly fee into medium (maybe you choose how much), or just give your credit card and set a cap on how much you can spend per month, and then when you visit posts on medium, the authors get paid out based on visits and percentage read (or something similar). That could have the potential to upend the indie blogger market right now. They'd have distribution, managed systems, and would get paid for their work.

ogezi 11y ago

This is probably one of the best news sites out there.

jug 11y ago

I miss international support on Medium. Or maybe recognition? But also in terms of features, like national "communities" or filters. I've thought about posting there but recognize that brand as one aimed for quality long form posts, but can't be assed to write all that in English. :( I want to be able to visit a medium.com/ger, medium.com/swe, etc. It's seemingly not even a topic brought up there in a FAQ or so. Funny, since I think it would open up many new markets.