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To be honest, Medium still provides the easiest of discovery processes. Twitter is still bad for the small guy. The algorithm is too bad. I know at least n peo

by rg111 4y ago

To be honest, Medium still provides the easiest of discovery processes. Twitter is still bad for the small guy. The algorithm is too bad. I know at least n people will find a tweet content really interesting, but I se k (<< n) likes. That frustrates me. Blogger, Wordpress, Bear Blog: none of them makes your content visible to others like Medium does. Those are the solutions that I like, because I don't want to do even little maintenance. And I want features like likes, comments, bookmarks, share buttons. I posted to Bear Blog and Medium same content some weeks back. It is on an obscure topic. The Bear Blog one has two toasts, nobody reached out to me regarding it. On the Medium one, there are 13 unique claps, two thoughful comments, people saving my article to several lists. I didn't have this with anything else, tbh. I tried maintaining a site using Jekyll and hosted on GH pages. I don't even like that amount of maintenance. I have research for org, self-research, books, family, physical activity, minor hacking projects. Really cannot find the time to fiddle with another thing.

rchaud 4y ago
> On the Medium one, there are 13 unique claps, two thoughful comments, people saving my article to several lists. Is a handful of additional comments worth the tradeoff? Because Medium.com can decide at any time to tweak the knobs of their recommendation engine, and your admittedly low traffic could go straight down to Bear Blog levels. That is what happened to many people's Instagram accounts, as IG is now favouring organic posts from users that also pay for promoted posts...aka, servicing their real customers.
- jmathai 4y ago
  But that tradeoff is hypothetical and would not retroactively remove value that is created in the meantime. I'm not a medium fan either but my feelings are similar to the parent post. If it's something I want to persist then I will take the effort and add it to my jekyll site but that's few and far between. Medium works great for the 99% of long form content I want to publish.
- rg111 4y ago
  I do not depend on my writings in any way. I also have a pseudonymous Less Wrong account where I say unconventional, unpopular things. See, I don't earn money OR make a name. I also write notes when I need- to Simplenote and Google Docs, and share the links with the people I see fit. I don't measure anything serious or important to me regarding views or reach. They are just a nice bonus. I wouldn’t even have that if not for Medium. FB is where I can get the best reach. But I don't like the distribution of people there, and post seldomly with extremely curated visibility list of "friends". I am happy with 10 likes. I also have an YT channel that helps people (edit: it's code and math). Very low effort channel with near-zero editing. I earn a penny or two. As I said, don't care. Need low-maintenance stuff.

by rg111 4y ago

rchaud 4y ago

> On the Medium one, there are 13 unique claps, two thoughful comments, people saving my article to several lists. Is a handful of additional comments worth the tradeoff? Because Medium.com can decide at any time to tweak the knobs of their recommendation engine, and your admittedly low traffic could go straight down to Bear Blog levels. That is what happened to many people's Instagram accounts, as IG is now favouring organic posts from users that also pay for promoted posts...aka, servicing their real customers.

jmathai 4y ago
But that tradeoff is hypothetical and would not retroactively remove value that is created in the meantime. I'm not a medium fan either but my feelings are similar to the parent post. If it's something I want to persist then I will take the effort and add it to my jekyll site but that's few and far between. Medium works great for the 99% of long form content I want to publish.
rg111 4y ago
I do not depend on my writings in any way. I also have a pseudonymous Less Wrong account where I say unconventional, unpopular things. See, I don't earn money OR make a name. I also write notes when I need- to Simplenote and Google Docs, and share the links with the people I see fit. I don't measure anything serious or important to me regarding views or reach. They are just a nice bonus. I wouldn’t even have that if not for Medium. FB is where I can get the best reach. But I don't like the distribution of people there, and post seldomly with extremely curated visibility list of "friends". I am happy with 10 likes. I also have an YT channel that helps people (edit: it's code and math). Very low effort channel with near-zero editing. I earn a penny or two. As I said, don't care. Need low-maintenance stuff.