by thebaer on 1/30/19, 1:05 PM with 367 comments
by new_here on 1/30/19, 2:31 PM
Non-VC companies are a longer and less glamorous slog to get off the ground but also don't come under pressure to compromise on their morals.
by kuhhk on 1/30/19, 1:29 PM
by Sir_Cmpwn on 1/30/19, 1:49 PM
https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/unmediumify
If you want, shoot me an email for free hosting, and I'll rig up builds.sr.ht to automate deployment for you, too: sir@cmpwn.com
by kareemm on 1/30/19, 4:18 PM
1. I want to write a draft, solicit comments to improve, edit, spell check, and run through tools like Hemingway
2. I want to publish to different platforms like LinkedIn, a blog (static site using markdown or Wordpress), an email tool like Drip, and Medium. Maybe missing some others.
3. Formatting the posts for each service is a PITA. Need images in different sizes and need to place them in the posts.
Ideally I'd like to be able to do all three using a single tool, connect my publishing platforms, click publish (maybe schedule them) and would have drafts in LinkedIn, Medium, Drip, etc.
This would save me so much time that I'd easily pay $50/m for this (and we're bootstrapped and cheap/"capital efficient"). Looks like write.as is heading somewhat in this direction but sadly doesn't hit the major platforms (yet?) Huge market, painful problem, selling to businesses, can build a great tool around content marketing workflow. Got the hallmarks of a great business.
by thebaer on 1/30/19, 4:33 PM
> We recently experienced an interruption with API, and the ability to generate new oAuth-based applications has been restricted. I have reenabled that feature.
This doesn't really explain why our 2-year-old integration suddenly stopped working (we didn't need to generate a new application). So I'm asking for more clarification.
by rco8786 on 1/30/19, 2:15 PM
by projectramo on 1/30/19, 1:56 PM
1. Labor
2. Cash
3. Personal Data/Ads
With a few exceptions (I can't think of any, but presumably you might) you have to pay through one of these methods.
If you don't like Medium, you can use Blogger (3), Ghost/Svbtle (2) or self host (1 + less 2).
To put it another way, are we annoyed at Medium or just the inevitable friction in the world. No matter what they promised, they can't sustain giving away a free service without 1,2 or 3.
Edit: write.as looks like an interesting one because it lets you toggle between 1 and 2. I assume everyone knows about wordpress.
by callahanrts on 1/30/19, 6:46 PM
EDIT: Here's a google form for anyone who wants to keep in touch https://goo.gl/forms/liv1JpAdKOjc4wJ23
by jordigh on 1/30/19, 2:42 PM
So to me, knowing that write.as was getting important enough for Medium to shut them out is more interesting than whatever Medium does.
by athenot on 1/30/19, 2:42 PM
For the record I was really excited when Medium came out and loved the simple, open, no-clutter style it had. But fast-forward to today and it's now very different.
by sfarhat on 1/30/19, 2:56 PM
by messo on 1/30/19, 1:42 PM
by drcongo on 1/30/19, 2:12 PM
by miguelmota on 1/30/19, 5:01 PM
by shaqbert on 1/30/19, 1:28 PM
Wanna be in control of "your" blog? Run your own software on your own server. Ghost, Gatsby, etc. to the rescue.
by davedx on 1/30/19, 3:08 PM
by pier25 on 1/30/19, 4:03 PM
The writing experience is still great, but the reading experience has become bad, specially on mobile.
I don't need the social features Medium offers. Most of the interesting discussions happen here on HN, Reddit, or Twitter anyway. I don't care about claps and such stuff either. I mostly write because I need to get something out of my system.
by colemickens on 1/30/19, 6:08 PM
I just don't get it. It's not a good look when I go to read a technical article from [startup], and wind up staring at a fullscreen popup begging me to signup for a Medium account. Really?
I'm adding it to my list of lessons that apparently people have to learn first hand - make personal backups [no, really, it's not that hard], use a password manager [no, really, it's easier than not], don't use GoDaddy [they were just on HN again in the last few weeks]... and don't use thin little SaaS that don't do anything and just want to posses your content and your users and eventually go under or go dark, leaving you holding the bag.
by andrew_ on 1/30/19, 6:47 PM
by kiba on 1/30/19, 1:28 PM
Blogging is hard to monetize without coming off as evil or desperate, so why bother?
But then again, you still need to fund servers and such.
by cooperadymas on 1/30/19, 6:59 PM
So it seems that the HN crowd and the general programmer community are not the audience for Medium.
Despite this, it seems that a large percentage of development tutorials and articles I come across today are hosted there.
Personally, I will be happy to see better alternatives start popping up.
by sizzzzlerz on 1/30/19, 2:20 PM
by boycaught on 1/30/19, 5:26 PM
by MKais on 1/30/19, 4:38 PM
by orta on 1/30/19, 6:06 PM
by stickfigure on 1/30/19, 4:48 PM
Has anyone checked? I can't find any sort of announcement. I get there's a lot to hate about medium now but this seems like a story that deserves a little more investigation.
by evrydayhustling on 1/30/19, 2:37 PM
by realityking on 1/30/19, 5:24 PM
With services like GitHub and Netlify (for hosting) and Contentful (as a content editing GUI) the day-to-day experience is seamless, you don't have to worry about security issues like you have with a traditional CMS, and you can make use of amazing tools like Gatsby.js (React based static site generator).
My colleague Khaled made a great tutorial specifically about Gatsby.js: https://www.contentful.com/blog/2018/02/28/contentful-gatsby...
Full disclosure: I work for Contentful
by tnolet on 1/30/19, 3:30 PM
But almost exactly when I started everything went downhill:
- viewership dropped
- shares dwindled
- short, copy & paste non-valuable content flooded everything.
In 1,5 years it went from "pretty cool" to "not publishing there ever again".
by 16th_hop on 1/30/19, 8:54 PM
https://honest.cash/chicken/mediumcom-is-engaging-in-ongoing...
by jonmaim on 1/30/19, 2:43 PM
I'm just surprised nobody mentioned any decentralised, blockchain-based platform where spending time and money building on it is just worth it for the future.
Have a look at the Steem blockchain: social network like publishing and commenting are free and even rewarded with crypto-currency payouts. And as a developer it is very elegant to develop on it.
by scarface74 on 1/30/19, 6:34 PM
We recently experienced an interruption with API, and the ability to generate new oAuth-based applications has been restricted. I have reenabled that feature.
It was a service outage, they didn’t remove the API.
by rdiddly on 1/30/19, 7:24 PM
Which isn't to invalidate recent criticism of Medium. They're basically trying to be the Netflix of blogs: a platform situated between readers & writers --> profit. But where Netflix gives you something cheaper & better for which you were formerly paying more, Medium is giving you something that used to be free and now I guess trying to do something profitable with that. I dunno...
by crooked-v on 1/30/19, 7:00 PM
Medium used to seem like it could fill that role, but then they moved towards being as annoying as possible to logged-out users.
by cabaalis on 1/30/19, 3:55 PM
by ngngngng on 1/30/19, 3:27 PM
by sergiotapia on 1/30/19, 2:13 PM
Did you know they don't even have a search API? It's like they're afraid of letting the content you wrote go outside their walled garden.
by amrrs on 1/30/19, 1:50 PM
Previously, a Wired's Publication did similar thing.
Despite all, (as someone who writes on medium) - I see it's one easy platform anyone to get started - kind of what blogspot used to do.
by danielkay on 1/30/19, 8:42 PM
I am curating few profiles myself; for example: https://potus.mytube.fm/
by owens99 on 1/31/19, 8:15 AM
by fidla on 1/30/19, 4:50 PM
by consultSKI on 1/30/19, 6:02 PM
by pawurb on 1/30/19, 5:58 PM
by bernardlunn on 2/1/19, 9:12 AM
by hobgoblin1234 on 1/30/19, 11:24 PM
by paulie_a on 1/31/19, 10:21 AM
At this point you are better off saying unemployed or I delivered weed.
by vietvu on 1/30/19, 5:54 PM
by thomasjudge on 1/30/19, 3:28 PM
by munificent on 1/30/19, 7:28 PM
If you're using a product or service, partnering with a company, using their API, buying their stuff, selling stuff to them, whatever, you should at some level understand their incentives. And, in a capitalist economy, "incentive" is mostly synonymous with "money".
If you don't know how the businesses you interact with make money, you're setting yourself up for heartbreak. As far as I can tell, tech companies make money one of four ways:
1. VC funding.
2. Selling your attention to other companies.
3. Selling your data to other companies.
4. You pay them for stuff.
1 has a finite lifespan which means, eventually, they will switch to one of the others. Unless you are certain which of the others they'll switch to and how, committing to use a business at this stage is a crapshoot. In practice, it seems businesses that currently rely on VC funding to stay solvent more often than not pivot to sad shady shit. Much of this has to do with not giving themselves any other options. Once they have a big userbase used to spending zero for their product, it's very hard to change, so they end up having to find money other sketchy ways.
2 is OK if you're OK with it. However, your attention is literally the most priceless commodity you own. Everything else you will ever do with your life begins with you spending attention on things. So if squandering a bit of that looking at dumb ads so that you can read a free article is worth it to you, that's fine, but I think most of us could probably find better things to do with our limited brain juice.
3 is maybe OK, but, man, it's dubious. The more a company knows about you, the more leverage they have to influence you. With machine learning is going, the amount of actionable intelligence companies can squeeze out of a given blob of data keeps going up. Stuff like Cambridge Analytica doesn't keeps me up at night. The long trajectory of this path looks an awful lot like straight up dystopia to me.
4 has served humanity fairly well for thousands of years. Its main point against is that you have to pay for stuff.
Personally, I try to do 4 when I can. Whenever I use a business that doesn't do 4, I assume anything at all could happen in the future. They owe me nothing because I've paid them nothing.
Anyone who's surprised by formerly-beloved-VC-backed-startup-that-turns-evil today must really be willfully blind.
by dymk on 1/30/19, 6:25 PM
This website owner went all nuclear and indignant because they couldn't wait back for a response from Medium, indicating the interruption was because of a bug.
Then they try to backpedal: "We don't get why a particular bug manifested this specific way so we're waiting for more details, but our heels are still dug into the ground".