7 ms·

While some interesting and insightful articles still exist on the site, the majority feels like someone trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this mo

by thefz 8y ago

While some interesting and insightful articles still exist on the site, the majority feels like someone trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning.

raverbashing 8y ago
Yeah, TEDx Talks in text format
- jtloong 8y ago
  Wow this is the perfect analogy.
- PaulHoule 8y ago
  TEDx Talks have more words in them and better visuals too.
  - dabockster 8y ago
    Still the same theme, though. Leads you through a story then either issues a call to action or tries to sell you something. The whole thing is built to affect you enough emotionally to perform whatever action the author wants.
headmelted 8y ago
I've noticed this myself. Also, of late it increasingly feels like I'm reading the Op-ed section of the NYT or the Guardian. I'm all for opinions on current affairs (I have loads!) but it's not what I came here to read, nor is it what your title suggested.
peruvian 8y ago
Or to sell themselves. Or worse, writing a subpar programming tutorial to have "online presence".
- tonystubblebine 8y ago
  I run a publication on Medium, Better Humans. My understanding is that the pivot to be a place where most writing is paid for was specifically to crowd out content marketing. The content marketing is, as the two of you say, basically Wikipedia summaries and people selling themselves. It's part of the style guide for their Membership program that writers can't have calls to action (with a few exceptions, like if it's an excerpt from your book). It's been a great program for us. We write in the area of personal development and it's allowed us to pour a lot of money into getting authors who've actually tested their advice and then working with them to write very thorough tutorials that other people could follow. In my biased opinion, what we used to compete with was trash simply because it didn't work. Content marketers were writing great headlines for productivity advice they'd never tested, the advice had huge gaps or mistakes, and then it would stop short of telling you what to do so that it could make some call-to-action sales pitch. We've been getting much less competition for page views from these trash articles based on recent Medium changes. The biggest change was that they manually review all articles before allowing an article to get promoted by their algorithm. As an example, I have an article I wrote that's just creeping up on 1M page views. That just wasn't possible before.
  - criddell 8y ago
    Why stay on Medium? Why not take total ownership and move to your own space?
    - tonystubblebine 8y ago
      It's a good partnership for us. - they handle distribution and are better at it than us. - they pay more than we'd make in ad rates or conversion to our own services. - it lets us focus on what we love doing, which is the writing and editing, without managing the other side of a publishing business. We have license to the copyright for most things we've done in the last 18 months, so it's not a full lock-in either.
      - criddell 8y ago
duxup 8y ago
> trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning. Often feel like resume padding is the underlying motivator too.
- bloopernova 8y ago
  This is true. There's a certain subtle pressure in the dev and IT community to be like those prolific open source contributors, stackoverflow gurus, and insightful bloggers with thousands of twitter followers. I imagine that there's a whole slew of different causes and neuroses mixed in with feeling that pressure, including the ever-present and insidious imposter syndrome. It's very difficult to feel "good enough" when you're comparing yourself to those hugely popular open source developers. It's probably tied up in the same bundle as people with an Instagram account trying to compare themselves to the models with tens of millions of followers.
gambler 8y ago
I don't know how many websites like Medium it will take for people to realize that for quality content a website needs: 1. Well-defined subject. 2. Some standard for quality. 3. Editors with a stake in the website who filter out things that do not fit 1 and 2 and deliberately cultivate the reader base and frequent writers. (I.e. not Wikipedia-style "editors".) It doesn't have to involve money. It doesn't have to be closed for the public to submit content. It doesn't have to mimic old media in any fashion. Websites like that used to exist in late 90s early 00s. Web 2.0 movement waged a war against all 3 bullet points above for the benefits of technocrats at the expense of everyone else. Now we're enjoying the consequences.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
I feel like 95% of the Medium posts I find are some vague attempt to sell. Usually some company trashing a competitor for pages, and then the last paragraph is their call to action to try their new replacement to said competitor.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by thefz 8y ago

While some interesting and insightful articles still exist on the site, the majority feels like someone trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning.

raverbashing 8y ago

Yeah, TEDx Talks in text format

jtloong 8y ago
Wow this is the perfect analogy.
PaulHoule 8y ago
TEDx Talks have more words in them and better visuals too.
- dabockster 8y ago
  Still the same theme, though. Leads you through a story then either issues a call to action or tries to sell you something. The whole thing is built to affect you enough emotionally to perform whatever action the author wants.

headmelted 8y ago

I've noticed this myself. Also, of late it increasingly feels like I'm reading the Op-ed section of the NYT or the Guardian. I'm all for opinions on current affairs (I have loads!) but it's not what I came here to read, nor is it what your title suggested.

peruvian 8y ago

Or to sell themselves. Or worse, writing a subpar programming tutorial to have "online presence".

tonystubblebine 8y ago
I run a publication on Medium, Better Humans. My understanding is that the pivot to be a place where most writing is paid for was specifically to crowd out content marketing. The content marketing is, as the two of you say, basically Wikipedia summaries and people selling themselves. It's part of the style guide for their Membership program that writers can't have calls to action (with a few exceptions, like if it's an excerpt from your book). It's been a great program for us. We write in the area of personal development and it's allowed us to pour a lot of money into getting authors who've actually tested their advice and then working with them to write very thorough tutorials that other people could follow. In my biased opinion, what we used to compete with was trash simply because it didn't work. Content marketers were writing great headlines for productivity advice they'd never tested, the advice had huge gaps or mistakes, and then it would stop short of telling you what to do so that it could make some call-to-action sales pitch. We've been getting much less competition for page views from these trash articles based on recent Medium changes. The biggest change was that they manually review all articles before allowing an article to get promoted by their algorithm. As an example, I have an article I wrote that's just creeping up on 1M page views. That just wasn't possible before.
- criddell 8y ago
  Why stay on Medium? Why not take total ownership and move to your own space?
  - tonystubblebine 8y ago
    It's a good partnership for us. - they handle distribution and are better at it than us. - they pay more than we'd make in ad rates or conversion to our own services. - it lets us focus on what we love doing, which is the writing and editing, without managing the other side of a publishing business. We have license to the copyright for most things we've done in the last 18 months, so it's not a full lock-in either.
    - criddell 8y ago

duxup 8y ago

> trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning. Often feel like resume padding is the underlying motivator too.

bloopernova 8y ago
This is true. There's a certain subtle pressure in the dev and IT community to be like those prolific open source contributors, stackoverflow gurus, and insightful bloggers with thousands of twitter followers. I imagine that there's a whole slew of different causes and neuroses mixed in with feeling that pressure, including the ever-present and insidious imposter syndrome. It's very difficult to feel "good enough" when you're comparing yourself to those hugely popular open source developers. It's probably tied up in the same bundle as people with an Instagram account trying to compare themselves to the models with tens of millions of followers.

gambler 8y ago

I don't know how many websites like Medium it will take for people to realize that for quality content a website needs: 1. Well-defined subject. 2. Some standard for quality. 3. Editors with a stake in the website who filter out things that do not fit 1 and 2 and deliberately cultivate the reader base and frequent writers. (I.e. not Wikipedia-style "editors".) It doesn't have to involve money. It doesn't have to be closed for the public to submit content. It doesn't have to mimic old media in any fashion. Websites like that used to exist in late 90s early 00s. Web 2.0 movement waged a war against all 3 bullet points above for the benefits of technocrats at the expense of everyone else. Now we're enjoying the consequences.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

I feel like 95% of the Medium posts I find are some vague attempt to sell. Usually some company trashing a competitor for pages, and then the last paragraph is their call to action to try their new replacement to said competitor.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]