7 ms·

Ask HN: What did Medium do wrong?

I keep reading about Medium going the wrong way, lots of writers leaving the platform, etc. I am curious what HN's perspective on this is. What did they do wrong? What used to make them so great?

sandwichbop 5y ago
Content made them great. It was refreshing to find articles worth reading. Now you usually hit a paywall as they're more desperate to monetize before getting to the second paragraph for things that aren't worth reading. Those who made good content wanted more control and started moving to other platforms. It feels that Medium is experiencing brain drain as content worth reading migrates elsewhere like Substack. But who knows if Substack will fall into disfavor in the future like Medium is right now.
- muzani 5y ago
  Substack > Medium > WordPress > Blogspot There's always been this huge demand for cheap blogging, and someone who met them then messed up that trust.
  - rishikeshs 5y ago
    What about Ghost?
    - muzani 5y ago
      Ghost is a different product to Medium IMO. Both are blogs but Ghost is targeted for professional bloggers, while Medium, Blogspot, WordPress etc are more casual. Maybe it was a mistake to put Blogspot in there as it wasn't really a community, but they were interlinked in some form of web ring.
Sevii 5y ago
I don't know because I can't read Medium articles anymore.
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
  Forced registration after a few article reads then you're saying (was the major wrong)?
  - davidatbu 5y ago
    This exactly has made the probability of me clicking on a medium.com link so much lower.
- rishikeshs 5y ago
  Same issue here. These days I do not even click Medium Links
NtochkaNzvanova 5y ago
1. Low quality content / not enough "gatekeeping". My perception is that Medium presented itself as a classier / higher-quality blogging platform, but that inevitably got diluted over time as more people joined. 2. Bad timing. Medium probably could have been Substack, but Substack seems to be capturing a lucky moment when trust in mainstream media is completely imploding, censorship is rife, and lots of independent voices are looking for alternative platforms. Substack is also attracting lots of domain experts who aren't traditional writers / journalists but see in Substack an easy way to monetize their expertise. 3. As for an exodus from Medium -> Substack, probably a lot of that is just Substack seeming cooler / more exclusive than Medium at this point. My expectation is that Substack will inevitably have a censorship crisis when it is forced to deplatform writers with "fringe" ideas (most likely on the right) and then it will lose its reputation as a more independent / free-speech platform, and the attention will move on to the next platform.
eigengrau5150 5y ago
Medium is a content farm. So is Substack.
andreacavagna 5y ago
The business model is misleading, not sure what is their User retention method, but asking a Lead to to become a paying user after 3 articles, looks not a great business model
cpach 5y ago
It’s a tricky space to operate in. When companies like that want to “drive growth” they have a tendency to introduce questionable methods that can be downright user-hostile. E.g. the irritating JavaScript they use that messes with the user’s ability to copy text from a Medium article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28494328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28494328 Stuff like that will irritate readers and give the publisher a bad name. It might be possible to run a publishing platform without resorting to nasty hacks like that, but the growth hacking shortcuts will be very tempting.
armchairhacker 5y ago
I really think it was paid subscription + there are many alternatives, so the articles aren’t worth paying for. If Medium had some advantage, like better content (for users) or better discoverability (for writers), it would be worth paying for. But it just doesn’t. There’s nothing I get out of Medium that I can’t find on other sites. There’s almost nothing a writer gets out of medium vs. creating their own site.
oiwe908234 5y ago
Well, they did recently put in a requirement that any writers eligible to be paid has to have 100 followers. I think the point was to make it to where only authors with a decent following are rewarded; what it's done is make everyone follow everyone and muddied the water so much that "number of followers" is a terrible metric now.

I keep reading about Medium going the wrong way, lots of writers leaving the platform, etc. I am curious what HN's perspective on this is. What did they do wrong? What used to make them so great?

sandwichbop 5y ago

Content made them great. It was refreshing to find articles worth reading. Now you usually hit a paywall as they're more desperate to monetize before getting to the second paragraph for things that aren't worth reading. Those who made good content wanted more control and started moving to other platforms. It feels that Medium is experiencing brain drain as content worth reading migrates elsewhere like Substack. But who knows if Substack will fall into disfavor in the future like Medium is right now.

muzani 5y ago
Substack > Medium > WordPress > Blogspot There's always been this huge demand for cheap blogging, and someone who met them then messed up that trust.
- rishikeshs 5y ago
  What about Ghost?
  - muzani 5y ago
    Ghost is a different product to Medium IMO. Both are blogs but Ghost is targeted for professional bloggers, while Medium, Blogspot, WordPress etc are more casual. Maybe it was a mistake to put Blogspot in there as it wasn't really a community, but they were interlinked in some form of web ring.

Sevii 5y ago

I don't know because I can't read Medium articles anymore.

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
Forced registration after a few article reads then you're saying (was the major wrong)?
- davidatbu 5y ago
  This exactly has made the probability of me clicking on a medium.com link so much lower.
rishikeshs 5y ago
Same issue here. These days I do not even click Medium Links

NtochkaNzvanova 5y ago

1. Low quality content / not enough "gatekeeping". My perception is that Medium presented itself as a classier / higher-quality blogging platform, but that inevitably got diluted over time as more people joined. 2. Bad timing. Medium probably could have been Substack, but Substack seems to be capturing a lucky moment when trust in mainstream media is completely imploding, censorship is rife, and lots of independent voices are looking for alternative platforms. Substack is also attracting lots of domain experts who aren't traditional writers / journalists but see in Substack an easy way to monetize their expertise. 3. As for an exodus from Medium -> Substack, probably a lot of that is just Substack seeming cooler / more exclusive than Medium at this point. My expectation is that Substack will inevitably have a censorship crisis when it is forced to deplatform writers with "fringe" ideas (most likely on the right) and then it will lose its reputation as a more independent / free-speech platform, and the attention will move on to the next platform.

eigengrau5150 5y ago

Medium is a content farm. So is Substack.

andreacavagna 5y ago

The business model is misleading, not sure what is their User retention method, but asking a Lead to to become a paying user after 3 articles, looks not a great business model

cpach 5y ago

It’s a tricky space to operate in. When companies like that want to “drive growth” they have a tendency to introduce questionable methods that can be downright user-hostile. E.g. the irritating JavaScript they use that messes with the user’s ability to copy text from a Medium article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28494328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28494328 Stuff like that will irritate readers and give the publisher a bad name. It might be possible to run a publishing platform without resorting to nasty hacks like that, but the growth hacking shortcuts will be very tempting.

armchairhacker 5y ago

I really think it was paid subscription + there are many alternatives, so the articles aren’t worth paying for. If Medium had some advantage, like better content (for users) or better discoverability (for writers), it would be worth paying for. But it just doesn’t. There’s nothing I get out of Medium that I can’t find on other sites. There’s almost nothing a writer gets out of medium vs. creating their own site.

oiwe908234 5y ago

Well, they did recently put in a requirement that any writers eligible to be paid has to have 100 followers. I think the point was to make it to where only authors with a decent following are rewarded; what it's done is make everyone follow everyone and muddied the water so much that "number of followers" is a terrible metric now.