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Well, the fundamental problem is that Capital comes in and builds a really great Thing, a Thing that may not have been built without Capital, but then Capital w

Well, the fundamental problem is that Capital comes in and builds a really great Thing, a Thing that may not have been built without Capital, but then Capital wants a Return, which causes the Thing to decay. The thing Hackers can do, as in the OPs article, is to salvage the good ideas that the initial efforts of Capital managed to prove, and leave out the rest. This won't work for individuals, in general, because writing good software is hard. Even if you rely heavily on 3rd party libraries like Jekyll, you still have to know how to pick those libraries, and how to use them, how to deploy them. Personally, I think it's cool that Capital is willing to get into the fray, even though it so often ends badly. Often it does contribute something, even if it dies. People get mad at Google for axing projects, like Reader, but why? Consider all the market validation they did, for you, for me, for free. Consider all the product design work they did, for all of us, for free. I don't even think it's bad that devs at Medium are, almost by definition, currently working on nothing but anti-features. It's just part of the Capital-driven software lifecycle, and they are feeding their families, and learning a lot. I can't even hate the managers who made unethical product decisions, because it was always going to be that way, and better to participate in the Capital driven software lifecycle and contribute something then to never have participated at all. There are amazing, sustainable, ethical, Capital-driven software ideas still waiting to be done, and that couldn't be done without Capital's involvement, but clearly that's not Medium and its ilk. But as Medium declines and eventually dies, remember that this is the fate that waits for every project, no matter how successful, and they leave behind valuable information for us.

ohithereyou 7y ago
>Consider all the market validation they did, for you, for me, for free. Consider all the product design work they did, for all of us, for free. I have a feeling that their intent wasn't to do it for free. What happened is that they couldn't gather enough information about their users to turn a profit. Yes, that's what capital does, but the end result was not free for any of its users - they gave up personal data to use it.
013a 7y ago
I like to look at it this way: bad ideas, or bad executions of good ideas, or bad fits for VC, that somehow get funding and die before going public, or even better, get purchased by some bloated old company with too much money; the end result is a wealth transfer from the ultra-wealthy to the middle class. Paychecks get paid out. Stock options liquidate for something usually. Services get purchased to support the business even though they may not be worth supporting. Right now, the VCs behind Medium are doing the world an amazing service. They're going to see almost no return on investment, but why would any of us "normal people" care about that? Its their money they're wasting. They're paying employees, probably a great wage. Probably providing a ton of benefits to attract talent, including lots of options, great insurance, snacks in the office, unlimited PTO. They're producing a product that is actively teaching competitors like write.as and ghost what Not To Do. I'd bet even most of their employees hate the direction they're going, which means they're learning as well.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tonystubblebine 7y ago
> But as Medium declines and eventually dies, remember that this is the fate that waits for every project, no matter how successful, and they leave behind valuable information for us. This statement makes me so angry with Medium's corporate communications. It makes total sense to me that you'd think this, but I also think it's dead wrong. The problem is that Medium is not clear that they've just straight up changed. So it's not that they are the big free open platform they used to be with an annoying "upgrade to pro" ad model on top of that. Rather, Medium is primarily a subscription service. Even though they aren't saying this, it's best to think of them as an open-platform version of Netflix where anyone could post an episode or show and get paid for it. That switch came with a switch in their incentive structure. The incentives for posting on Medium used to be that Medium will bring in a lot of traffic from their network. But they now limit that to articles that are published inside their subscription service. So there's not really any reason to post outside of their subscription service. This is what I think you're experiencing: the free, non-paywalled portions of Medium are dying because the incentives for publishing went away and the aggressiveness at advertising their actual product (subscribe for, they hope, great content) has become more aggressive. Meanwhile, while the experience that ElementaryOS was using Medium for is dying, there's a new experience that's quite good and I think plays a nice balancing role in the overall Internet ecosystem. Medium is making a place that rewards quality writing, tries to eliminate writing for the purpose of marketing, and is pouring money into authors and editors so that they can invest more quality into their articles.
- agustif 7y ago
  > Medium is making a place that rewards quality writing, tries to eliminate writing for the purpose of marketing, and is pouring money into authors and editors so that they can invest more quality into their articles. As someone who by principle wont ever pay that subscription, my experience is quite the contrary having all those metrics you say, going to the shit, starting from quality content... Maybe some great articles get hidden behind the paywall but mostly to me it seems all low-quality click-bait shit now, and on top of it they put the modals and stuff...
  - tonystubblebine 7y ago
drinchev 7y ago
> and they leave behind valuable information for us Leaving information so far : 1. https://svbtle.com https://svbtle.com 2. https://posthaven.com https://posthaven.com 3. https://www.blogger.com https://www.blogger.com ... Not sure, but self-hosting was ( is ) the only way for me to sleep safe.
michaelbrave 7y ago
I have to politely disagree about Reader, it was already proven and working well, what they did was a bit of a scorched earth tactic, other companies couldn't compete with free and died. Then they pulled out and left a vacuum which has lead to a significant decline in in the usage of RSS in the modern web.
SahAssar 7y ago
> Well, the fundamental problem is that Capital comes in and builds a really great Thing, a Thing that may not have been built without Capital, but then Capital wants a Return, which causes the Thing to decay. I feel like most of the examples of this are the other way around: Great Thing is built without a lot of capital (other than a bit to get started, if even that), then gets a bit of traction, and then Captial comes in and the demands for increased ever revenue starts, even if it might not lead to profits. We really need to have a concept of a sustainable startup, not just "hyper-scale or bust". That is what normal people call a "business".

ohithereyou 7y ago

>Consider all the market validation they did, for you, for me, for free. Consider all the product design work they did, for all of us, for free. I have a feeling that their intent wasn't to do it for free. What happened is that they couldn't gather enough information about their users to turn a profit. Yes, that's what capital does, but the end result was not free for any of its users - they gave up personal data to use it.

013a 7y ago

I like to look at it this way: bad ideas, or bad executions of good ideas, or bad fits for VC, that somehow get funding and die before going public, or even better, get purchased by some bloated old company with too much money; the end result is a wealth transfer from the ultra-wealthy to the middle class. Paychecks get paid out. Stock options liquidate for something usually. Services get purchased to support the business even though they may not be worth supporting. Right now, the VCs behind Medium are doing the world an amazing service. They're going to see almost no return on investment, but why would any of us "normal people" care about that? Its their money they're wasting. They're paying employees, probably a great wage. Probably providing a ton of benefits to attract talent, including lots of options, great insurance, snacks in the office, unlimited PTO. They're producing a product that is actively teaching competitors like write.as and ghost what Not To Do. I'd bet even most of their employees hate the direction they're going, which means they're learning as well.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tonystubblebine 7y ago

> But as Medium declines and eventually dies, remember that this is the fate that waits for every project, no matter how successful, and they leave behind valuable information for us. This statement makes me so angry with Medium's corporate communications. It makes total sense to me that you'd think this, but I also think it's dead wrong. The problem is that Medium is not clear that they've just straight up changed. So it's not that they are the big free open platform they used to be with an annoying "upgrade to pro" ad model on top of that. Rather, Medium is primarily a subscription service. Even though they aren't saying this, it's best to think of them as an open-platform version of Netflix where anyone could post an episode or show and get paid for it. That switch came with a switch in their incentive structure. The incentives for posting on Medium used to be that Medium will bring in a lot of traffic from their network. But they now limit that to articles that are published inside their subscription service. So there's not really any reason to post outside of their subscription service. This is what I think you're experiencing: the free, non-paywalled portions of Medium are dying because the incentives for publishing went away and the aggressiveness at advertising their actual product (subscribe for, they hope, great content) has become more aggressive. Meanwhile, while the experience that ElementaryOS was using Medium for is dying, there's a new experience that's quite good and I think plays a nice balancing role in the overall Internet ecosystem. Medium is making a place that rewards quality writing, tries to eliminate writing for the purpose of marketing, and is pouring money into authors and editors so that they can invest more quality into their articles.

agustif 7y ago
> Medium is making a place that rewards quality writing, tries to eliminate writing for the purpose of marketing, and is pouring money into authors and editors so that they can invest more quality into their articles. As someone who by principle wont ever pay that subscription, my experience is quite the contrary having all those metrics you say, going to the shit, starting from quality content... Maybe some great articles get hidden behind the paywall but mostly to me it seems all low-quality click-bait shit now, and on top of it they put the modals and stuff...
- tonystubblebine 7y ago

drinchev 7y ago

> and they leave behind valuable information for us Leaving information so far : 1. https://svbtle.com https://svbtle.com 2. https://posthaven.com https://posthaven.com 3. https://www.blogger.com https://www.blogger.com ... Not sure, but self-hosting was ( is ) the only way for me to sleep safe.

michaelbrave 7y ago

I have to politely disagree about Reader, it was already proven and working well, what they did was a bit of a scorched earth tactic, other companies couldn't compete with free and died. Then they pulled out and left a vacuum which has lead to a significant decline in in the usage of RSS in the modern web.

SahAssar 7y ago

> Well, the fundamental problem is that Capital comes in and builds a really great Thing, a Thing that may not have been built without Capital, but then Capital wants a Return, which causes the Thing to decay. I feel like most of the examples of this are the other way around: Great Thing is built without a lot of capital (other than a bit to get started, if even that), then gets a bit of traction, and then Captial comes in and the demands for increased ever revenue starts, even if it might not lead to profits. We really need to have a concept of a sustainable startup, not just "hyper-scale or bust". That is what normal people call a "business".