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Medium is banking on the other alternative: most sites die off and a natural monopoly emerges because no one wants to pay for access to more than say three site
by iSnow 11y ago
Medium is banking on the other alternative: most sites die off and a natural monopoly emerges because no one wants to pay for access to more than say three sites. They want to be the facebook of long form comment.
- ekianjo 11y agoOK but they have nothing going for them. The next time I see a paywall, I'll just avoid it and look for content elsewhere.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoI can't see that working, because Medium isn't competing with giant content sites - it's competing with small individual blogs. And those aren't going to die out. Medium's problem is that most of the content isn't truly valuable. It's beautifully presented and often interesting, but there's very little that would make me want to pay money for it. I might pay money to a small selection of the best authors, and it wouldn't be so bad if the sites they publish on take a cut. The only site I'd seriously consider paying regular money to is Quora, because the content is entertaining and often valuable to me. The other big sites don't make the cut. Maybe TechCrunch, at a push? Certainly not Wired, which has always been mostly noise. The problem is that most tech blogs offer distraction, not value, and Generation Buzzfeed won't pay for distraction. Paywalls are unlikely to work until the industry understands the distinction.