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It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read. Medium may still be better than most, but, like Gruber points out, they've been heading down a bad "gr

It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read. Medium may still be better than most, but, like Gruber points out, they've been heading down a bad "growth hacking" path lately. What really blows my mind is how awful so many websites from old publications with high-quality print editions are. A lot of these publications had quality standards for advertisers, and they worked hard to design nice-looking print layouts. As a result, even if there were a lot of ads they were at least unobtrusive and often kind of interesting and worth looking at in and of themselves. But it's like publishers are somehow incapable of thinking about a website the same way they think about a magazine. When I end up on a website that takes fifteen seconds to load, makes text jump around as different ads are displayed and hidden, autoplays video, and pesters me with popups I wonder if anyone who works at the publisher ever actually uses their website. I mean, who, in their right mind, could ever think they were providing an even halfway decent product? I have absolutely no sympathy when legacy publishers who peddle terrible, low-quality product struggle and go out of business. I mean, I hate to see media power consolidating into Facebook's hands, and it sucks when people lose their jobs, but these publishers have no one to blame but themselves.

Cacti 9y ago
I mean, it's puposeful. All of that crap increases accidental page clicks on ads. Most of those aren't useful but every now and then someone pauses at the ad, reads it for longer than usual, and bam, now you've got someone tagged in your tracking metrics as having an interest in whatever's in the ad, and you can target them or sell that info where it can b.e correlated with other data.
- skewart 9y ago
  Oh for sure. You're definitely right about that. It's just short-sighted. Various metrics might go up from month to month or year over year, but they'll drive away their cuatomers over a decade.
  - x0x0 9y ago
    Two things: 1 - direct response advertisers (obviously not all of them, but a big fraction) care deeply about purchases / test drives / whatever. Interactions that don't lead to purchases don't make money for a publisher. fb pretty thoroughly poisoned the well for advertisers paying for some sort of fleeting social interaction, though Snap is trying. 2 - Everyone here complaining about medium and still reading it... it's like that Woody Allen joke -- Woman one: "The food here is terrible." Woman two: "I know, and such small portions!"
    - skewart 9y ago
      > Everyone here complaining about medium and still reading it... At the end of the day the content itself is mostly what matters. As long as people I want to read are posting on Medium I'll read stuff there. And really, it's not that bad these days. But, if the same content were posted somewhere else that offered a better reading experience I'd definitelt to read it there. I do generally avoid clicking on links to local newspaper and TV news sites, since they tend to be truly awful. Publishers know that content is what matters most, and people will put up with a ton to get to it. But they have a much weaker grip on content than they probably think.
      - jonnathanson 9y ago
        Publishers have a strong grip on content. Writers, as a class, are wildly underpaid and usually struggling. Publishers have no trouble hiring, firing, retaining, and generally replacing journalists. Rockstar journalists with big followings are flight risks, sure, but they are not disproportionately responsible for content output. And at the end of the day, the content business is a volume game. By contrast, publishers have a very weak grip on us, the end users. We prefer to consume our content on platforms like FB and Snapchat and Twitter, or linked on boards like Reddit and HN. Very few of us are actually direct-navigating to publishers' sites and apps to consume content at the source. And we have decreasing loyalty to any particular publishing brand. Ultimately this may lead to a weaker grip on content. If anyone can make the economics of publishing work while retaining a smaller staff of better compensated journalists, they will be able to have their pick of the best journalists in the world. The compensation bar is really really low these days, and anyone who pays journalists a comfortable living wage in 2017 can clear that bar and win a ton of goodwill. It's the revenue side of the equation that's tricky to make work.
rsync 9y ago
"It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read." I cannot stop showing this to people: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-protesters-attack-video-analysis.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-pro... That is amazing. The web has been perverted and prostituted and bent out of shape in every which way but this ... This is the promise fulfilled, 15 years later, of "web 2.0". This is what they were talking about and what we wanted but didn't know how to ask for.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  I, for one, am glad they could do such phenomenal work in the service of further alienating the USA public from yet another Near Eastern nation. What a waste it would have been to put in this sort of effort on something unimportant like the economy or the environment!
  - killedbydeath 9y ago
    Come on, is respecting US laws on US soil really that much to ask without the fear of alienating Turkey? There need to be boundaries, even if you care very much about diplomacy.
  - whyenot 9y ago
    Likewise, I wish you would have found something more deserving instead of criticizing a solid piece of journalism. Look at the design of the article, the integration of video and text, the restrained use of ads... Even if you don't appreciate the content, stylistically, the are some very nice things about this article.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    It is about the environment. When you get beat up on your own soil by someone who doesn't even live here, that's not a good environment. Nor can the economy really function well if the environment is chaotic & lawless like this incident.
- Animats 9y ago
  Yes. That's very impressive. The NYT ends the article with "If you can identify anybody in the video or have other information regarding the events, you can anonymously submit information through our tips line at nytimes.com/tips."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Cacti 9y ago

I mean, it's puposeful. All of that crap increases accidental page clicks on ads. Most of those aren't useful but every now and then someone pauses at the ad, reads it for longer than usual, and bam, now you've got someone tagged in your tracking metrics as having an interest in whatever's in the ad, and you can target them or sell that info where it can b.e correlated with other data.

skewart 9y ago
Oh for sure. You're definitely right about that. It's just short-sighted. Various metrics might go up from month to month or year over year, but they'll drive away their cuatomers over a decade.
- x0x0 9y ago
  Two things: 1 - direct response advertisers (obviously not all of them, but a big fraction) care deeply about purchases / test drives / whatever. Interactions that don't lead to purchases don't make money for a publisher. fb pretty thoroughly poisoned the well for advertisers paying for some sort of fleeting social interaction, though Snap is trying. 2 - Everyone here complaining about medium and still reading it... it's like that Woody Allen joke -- Woman one: "The food here is terrible." Woman two: "I know, and such small portions!"
  - skewart 9y ago
    > Everyone here complaining about medium and still reading it... At the end of the day the content itself is mostly what matters. As long as people I want to read are posting on Medium I'll read stuff there. And really, it's not that bad these days. But, if the same content were posted somewhere else that offered a better reading experience I'd definitelt to read it there. I do generally avoid clicking on links to local newspaper and TV news sites, since they tend to be truly awful. Publishers know that content is what matters most, and people will put up with a ton to get to it. But they have a much weaker grip on content than they probably think.
    - jonnathanson 9y ago
      Publishers have a strong grip on content. Writers, as a class, are wildly underpaid and usually struggling. Publishers have no trouble hiring, firing, retaining, and generally replacing journalists. Rockstar journalists with big followings are flight risks, sure, but they are not disproportionately responsible for content output. And at the end of the day, the content business is a volume game. By contrast, publishers have a very weak grip on us, the end users. We prefer to consume our content on platforms like FB and Snapchat and Twitter, or linked on boards like Reddit and HN. Very few of us are actually direct-navigating to publishers' sites and apps to consume content at the source. And we have decreasing loyalty to any particular publishing brand. Ultimately this may lead to a weaker grip on content. If anyone can make the economics of publishing work while retaining a smaller staff of better compensated journalists, they will be able to have their pick of the best journalists in the world. The compensation bar is really really low these days, and anyone who pays journalists a comfortable living wage in 2017 can clear that bar and win a ton of goodwill. It's the revenue side of the equation that's tricky to make work.

rsync 9y ago

"It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read." I cannot stop showing this to people: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-protesters-attack-video-analysis.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-pro... That is amazing. The web has been perverted and prostituted and bent out of shape in every which way but this ... This is the promise fulfilled, 15 years later, of "web 2.0". This is what they were talking about and what we wanted but didn't know how to ask for.

jessaustin 9y ago
I, for one, am glad they could do such phenomenal work in the service of further alienating the USA public from yet another Near Eastern nation. What a waste it would have been to put in this sort of effort on something unimportant like the economy or the environment!
- killedbydeath 9y ago
  Come on, is respecting US laws on US soil really that much to ask without the fear of alienating Turkey? There need to be boundaries, even if you care very much about diplomacy.
- whyenot 9y ago
  Likewise, I wish you would have found something more deserving instead of criticizing a solid piece of journalism. Look at the design of the article, the integration of video and text, the restrained use of ads... Even if you don't appreciate the content, stylistically, the are some very nice things about this article.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  It is about the environment. When you get beat up on your own soil by someone who doesn't even live here, that's not a good environment. Nor can the economy really function well if the environment is chaotic & lawless like this incident.
Animats 9y ago
Yes. That's very impressive. The NYT ends the article with "If you can identify anybody in the video or have other information regarding the events, you can anonymously submit information through our tips line at nytimes.com/tips."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]