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Patreon's UI is atrocious! At least for the things I use it for. If all it was was a way to give people a donation and nothing else then it wouldn't matter but

Patreon's UI is atrocious! At least for the things I use it for. If all it was was a way to give people a donation and nothing else then it wouldn't matter but many people use it as a way to distribute digital media for $$$ But, there is no catalog of media. All you can do is go through old blog posts. The UI of the blog posts is a single page app that you pick "more" at the bottom of every 10 posts. It crashes often and you have re-start back at post 1 when it does and paginate your way back to where you started. Fixing the pagination would be nice but fixing the entire UI around actually helping people distribute their media would be even better. In fact many people don't even put their media on Patreon given how bad the UI is and are forced to find 3rd party solutions Also, Patreon is horrible at discovery. For the most part you have to find out about people to become a patron of offsite. Some of that is the people on Patreon not knowing what they are doing but arguably Patreon needs a better way to browse people and concretely know what they'll get access to. Not just "you'll get access to special videos" but rather tell me exactly which videos, how many, how long are they, what is each individual video about, etc.... Even for artists Patreon could generate a series of thumbnails, small enough that just the thumbnails are not enough but large enough that you can tell what art you'll get access to. Given how bad the UX is it's slightly infuriating they're the most popular of such sites. I guess that just means there is plenty of room for someone to steal their market. Further, Patreon has lots of people scamming for $$$, reselling other people's art. There are Patreon accounts for blogs of pirate videos like someone runs a blogspot blog of torrents and has a Pateron to support their activity. Or someone uploads videos they don't own to a video site and has a Patreon to support their "cataloging".

crispyporkbites 6y ago
Perhaps that UX is a part of its allure, it feels like you’re in an exclusive club and you better check in every week to get the latest content.
- vmception 6y ago
  No. It's an after thought because they are in the business of equity sales.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  Rubbish. For any given "new patron" relationship, most content is past content. I wrote up how horrible the experience is in a comment on a past thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23691168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23691168 As far as I can tell, Patreon's most compelling attribute is a clever name. If some other company nailed the discovery and "new connection" experience, they'd own the niche. There's a small network effect but I doubt it's terribly compelling since creators can easily exist on multiple networks.
  - pkamb 6y ago
    The name is really good.
    - a9h74j 6y ago
      In the late 90's or so I was thinking of "AET" for Artist and Entertainer Tribute.
xenadu02 6y ago
Agreed. For a site where so many creators are trying to share exclusive content with backers Patreon sure has an actively hostile UX. What are they spending so much money on?
hutattedonmyarm 6y ago
Yeah, the site itself is horrible enough, that I set up email notifications for new posts, which then get auto-send to a newsfeed address at my Inoreader (RSS "provider") account. So I get all new posts in my RSS feed and I barely ever hyve to visit the site
rossvor 6y ago
Minor anecdote on amount of attention Patreon pays to UI. About 2 months ago I've discovered that you can access some locked videos without being logged in. I've reported it to their security team and they replied that's already been reported and it's in their fix queue. Well I've just checked, and the problem is still there and not fixed. I guess their fix queue is long.

crispyporkbites 6y ago

Perhaps that UX is a part of its allure, it feels like you’re in an exclusive club and you better check in every week to get the latest content.

vmception 6y ago
No. It's an after thought because they are in the business of equity sales.
stickfigure 6y ago
Rubbish. For any given "new patron" relationship, most content is past content. I wrote up how horrible the experience is in a comment on a past thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23691168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23691168 As far as I can tell, Patreon's most compelling attribute is a clever name. If some other company nailed the discovery and "new connection" experience, they'd own the niche. There's a small network effect but I doubt it's terribly compelling since creators can easily exist on multiple networks.
- pkamb 6y ago
  The name is really good.
  - a9h74j 6y ago
    In the late 90's or so I was thinking of "AET" for Artist and Entertainer Tribute.

xenadu02 6y ago

Agreed. For a site where so many creators are trying to share exclusive content with backers Patreon sure has an actively hostile UX. What are they spending so much money on?

hutattedonmyarm 6y ago

Yeah, the site itself is horrible enough, that I set up email notifications for new posts, which then get auto-send to a newsfeed address at my Inoreader (RSS "provider") account. So I get all new posts in my RSS feed and I barely ever hyve to visit the site

rossvor 6y ago

Minor anecdote on amount of attention Patreon pays to UI. About 2 months ago I've discovered that you can access some locked videos without being logged in. I've reported it to their security team and they replied that's already been reported and it's in their fix queue. Well I've just checked, and the problem is still there and not fixed. I guess their fix queue is long.