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Turns out Evan Williams was right, but much too early.

• staunch 9y ago
  Or maybe he set podcasting back 5 years by giving up on it ;-) If he was a true believer, he'd have realized Medium isn't the long-form content he was looking for. He didn't fully commit to Odeo, and that's why he gave up when Apple made its move. I still remember thinking "Fuck!" when I saw that "Try our new thing twttr" banner at the top of Odeo. I liked where they were headed. Twitter + Podcasts are all you need. No one really wants to read long-form text on a computer. Medium.com should have been Odeo 2.0 It's just so much richer to listen to a monologue, or socratic debate, in most cases. @ev should pivot Medium into being the biggest podcast publisher in the world, by sponsoring every high quality podcast and building a better version of patreon for podcasters. There's a lot of amazing people that should be podcasting and are not.
  • kough 9y ago
    > Twitter + Podcasts are all you need. No one really wants to read long-form text on a computer. Medium was a bad idea. LOL I would obviously prefer reading long form text on a book, but do you really prefer audio to digital text? Story telling is one thing, but for most of what I'm reading I think a low-bandwidth, search-free environment (audio) is a bad match.
    • staunch 9y ago
      I learn a lot more from audiobooks, podcasts, and youtube videos these days than from any other source. I listen at 1.5 or 2x speed and find it as close to an "I know kung fu" experience as it gets.
      • RmDen 9y ago
        Agreed... difficult to read a book on a run or while walking to the train station
    • hnal943 9y ago
      Audio is much better for transient stuff like news, not so much for reference.