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Unfortunately this is a bit of a flawed blog post on Medium's behalf. The facts are that 50 people were fired due to burn rate and lack of revenue. The second

by raiyu 10y ago

Unfortunately this is a bit of a flawed blog post on Medium's behalf. The facts are that 50 people were fired due to burn rate and lack of revenue. The second fact is that "NO" fact is given to how this will be rectified in the future. The third issue is an opinion. That people need to be paid for the content they produce. This isn't true. There are plenty of people that are happy to contribute purely for the common good or for fame. Just look at Open Source and Linux. It's obvious that Linus is no where near compensated for the imprint that his work has had on technology, yet he did it and continues to do it anyway. Lastly, if you do provide a platform people can monetize their following, just like Instagram and Snapchat celebrities can monetize their following on their own with Instagram or Snapchat providing them a direct tool for that. No blogging platform outside of Wordpress has succeeded to monetize and self-sustain and it is the exception that proves the rule. Basically that the content generated on blogs is too long form with a disjoint following and not enough focus on entertainment which is the primary driver of ad revenue to survive. It's the same issue that is facing the news today, they either pander to the lowest common denominator or they aren't compensated enough to sustain themselves. That or they just have too much overhead. Overall the reality is that many people lost their jobs and the response is just a bit of fluff, when the reality is we screwed up our business model and had to make cuts would have been much more honest. Instead they are trying to revolutionize something? It just sounds empty.

alexandercrohde 10y ago
It's interesting because I think that the means of distribution of information is getting revolutionized, and it's needed (e.g. wikipedia, youtube). However, medium saying "Well, we're pivoting away from click-baity profit-mongering to solving society's problems because we always cared, and it's just a coincidence we were losing money" is hard to swallow.
- jraedisch 10y ago
  I'm still willing to give them the benefit of a doubt and would like to read more press releases by media outlets searching for alternatives to ads/tracking – preferably without the firing part.
smitherfield 10y ago
Full agreement. Minor quibble: > Just look at Open Source and Linux. It's obvious that Linus is no where near compensated for the imprint that his work has had on technology, yet he did it and continues to do it anyway. I've read that Linus has a personal fortune of at least $40 million. (He presumably commands an hourly consulting rate in the high five or even six figures). So yeah, he's no Gates/Jobs, but he's doing pretty well for himself. And Linux would never have been viable as a commercial product. (It would just be some Finnish dude's buggy/incomplete Solaris clone). IMO a better example in tech of a founder making a financial sacrifice for the common good is Jimmy Wales. If Wikipedia had been a for-profit/ad-supported site, he'd be a billionaire now.
- return0 10y ago
  And both are outliers. There are very few hugely successful projects, but billions of blog posts.
- raiyu 10y ago
  $40MM is definitely nothing to scoff at but if you consider the overall enterprise value of linux out there in the wild, then it's definitely less than even 1% of the value that was created. So on absolute basis compared to a regular salary it's great, but relatively to the value created, it's no where near the value that he brought to the world.
  - smitherfield 10y ago
    But no value would've been created if Linux hadn't been open-source.
munificent 10y ago
> The third issue is an opinion. That people need to be paid for the content they produce. This isn't true. There are plenty of people that are happy to contribute purely for the common good or for fame. It is true that some people will produce art without compensation. That's one of the really cool things about human nature. Given the freedom to do so, we just seem to love making and sharing stuff. However, there is a scary downside. The culture of a people is defined and propagated in part by the content and art they produce. If that content is only produced by the people who have the financial freedom to do so for free, then you miss out on the voices of the people who can't afford that. I don't think that's healthy for a community.
- raiyu 10y ago
  Depends on how you view financial freedom. The reality is that financial freedom is anyone who has free time. That means you aren't spending 100% of your existence to sustain yourself. Once you have free time you have the ability to create art. Certainly well over the majority of today's population in any 1st world country has free time and thus the ability to create art.
k-mcgrady 10y ago
>> "There are plenty of people that are happy to contribute purely for the common good or for fame." This is true, there is so much content available now. But 90% of it is shit (Medium is a great example of this). The other stuff is good but I don't see as much stuff on the level of the great music, art, writing etc. of the past. For this it seems compensation is necessary as it requires long focus/dedication to produce.

by raiyu 10y ago

alexandercrohde 10y ago

It's interesting because I think that the means of distribution of information is getting revolutionized, and it's needed (e.g. wikipedia, youtube). However, medium saying "Well, we're pivoting away from click-baity profit-mongering to solving society's problems because we always cared, and it's just a coincidence we were losing money" is hard to swallow.

jraedisch 10y ago
I'm still willing to give them the benefit of a doubt and would like to read more press releases by media outlets searching for alternatives to ads/tracking – preferably without the firing part.

smitherfield 10y ago

Full agreement. Minor quibble: > Just look at Open Source and Linux. It's obvious that Linus is no where near compensated for the imprint that his work has had on technology, yet he did it and continues to do it anyway. I've read that Linus has a personal fortune of at least $40 million. (He presumably commands an hourly consulting rate in the high five or even six figures). So yeah, he's no Gates/Jobs, but he's doing pretty well for himself. And Linux would never have been viable as a commercial product. (It would just be some Finnish dude's buggy/incomplete Solaris clone). IMO a better example in tech of a founder making a financial sacrifice for the common good is Jimmy Wales. If Wikipedia had been a for-profit/ad-supported site, he'd be a billionaire now.

return0 10y ago
And both are outliers. There are very few hugely successful projects, but billions of blog posts.
raiyu 10y ago
$40MM is definitely nothing to scoff at but if you consider the overall enterprise value of linux out there in the wild, then it's definitely less than even 1% of the value that was created. So on absolute basis compared to a regular salary it's great, but relatively to the value created, it's no where near the value that he brought to the world.
- smitherfield 10y ago
  But no value would've been created if Linux hadn't been open-source.

munificent 10y ago

> The third issue is an opinion. That people need to be paid for the content they produce. This isn't true. There are plenty of people that are happy to contribute purely for the common good or for fame. It is true that some people will produce art without compensation. That's one of the really cool things about human nature. Given the freedom to do so, we just seem to love making and sharing stuff. However, there is a scary downside. The culture of a people is defined and propagated in part by the content and art they produce. If that content is only produced by the people who have the financial freedom to do so for free, then you miss out on the voices of the people who can't afford that. I don't think that's healthy for a community.

raiyu 10y ago
Depends on how you view financial freedom. The reality is that financial freedom is anyone who has free time. That means you aren't spending 100% of your existence to sustain yourself. Once you have free time you have the ability to create art. Certainly well over the majority of today's population in any 1st world country has free time and thus the ability to create art.

k-mcgrady 10y ago

>> "There are plenty of people that are happy to contribute purely for the common good or for fame." This is true, there is so much content available now. But 90% of it is shit (Medium is a great example of this). The other stuff is good but I don't see as much stuff on the level of the great music, art, writing etc. of the past. For this it seems compensation is necessary as it requires long focus/dedication to produce.