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I'm pro Dev.to, but also pro Medium. What's nice about them both is that they are differentiated incentive structures so it does create actual choice for reader

I'm pro Dev.to, but also pro Medium. What's nice about them both is that they are differentiated incentive structures so it does create actual choice for readers and authors. But, I'm not sure what implosion on Medium you're talking about. That sounds like the talking points that two publications were using as they left medium (HN and FCC). But there was a shady backstory there and a lot of posturing to set themselves up to be independent. But those publications leaving just ended up leaving a temporary gap that other publications quickly filled. Towards Data Science is now doing well north of 10 million page views a month. That's twice the size of Dev.to. And I helped launch a new publication in May, Better Programming, that just crossed 4 million views per month. I think when people here say that Medium decisions are user unfriendly that they are only seeing half of the picture. The paywall in particular is very author friendly. Now Medium brings authors both money and readers and you barely have to work for it. That's a good deal and creates incentives for a lot more and better writing. That end result is user friendly.

minimaxir 7y ago
I'm more referring to individual Medium contributors (which is more analogous to Dev's model) than publications. I haven't seen a dev-oriented Medium.com article pop up on Twitter/Reddit/HN in a very long time (I've seen much less TDS too in the past year, and pretty much nothing from FCC or HN since they went independent; I probably should research that further). Admittingly, that's anecdata. However, "the paywall in particular is very author friendly" is incorrect. If you want to monetize, sure, but the majority of people I know went to post on Medium in the first place did it to share personal knowledge with an easy-to-use UI/UX and get feedback, not to generate money.
- tonystubblebine 7y ago
  I appreciate you saying anecdata. Yeah, definitely, it's a mixed bag. My hard data says someone's still writing to generate all these page views. But I don't have any way to help expand on your anecdata about which authors think it's a bad deal and which think it's a good deal. I only meet the ones that think it's a good deal.

minimaxir 7y ago

I'm more referring to individual Medium contributors (which is more analogous to Dev's model) than publications. I haven't seen a dev-oriented Medium.com article pop up on Twitter/Reddit/HN in a very long time (I've seen much less TDS too in the past year, and pretty much nothing from FCC or HN since they went independent; I probably should research that further). Admittingly, that's anecdata. However, "the paywall in particular is very author friendly" is incorrect. If you want to monetize, sure, but the majority of people I know went to post on Medium in the first place did it to share personal knowledge with an easy-to-use UI/UX and get feedback, not to generate money.

tonystubblebine 7y ago
I appreciate you saying anecdata. Yeah, definitely, it's a mixed bag. My hard data says someone's still writing to generate all these page views. But I don't have any way to help expand on your anecdata about which authors think it's a bad deal and which think it's a good deal. I only meet the ones that think it's a good deal.