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It’s crazy to me that they seem completely blind to the root problem. When I pick a blogging platform I don’t want popups, paywalls, required logins, or anythin

It’s crazy to me that they seem completely blind to the root problem. When I pick a blogging platform I don’t want popups, paywalls, required logins, or anything other than the content. Medium took off because it had a simple clean UI and good posts, and seemed like the lowest friction way to blog. Now Medium has huge amounts of friction and feels like yet another business trying to pump money out of users, so Substack is the new go-to and someone else takes their place.

jrumbut 4y ago
I assume the plan from day one was make a very appealing platform at a loss, gain a moat from a huge library of good content, then squeeze the profit out of it. It's a deceptive business model, and people feel deceived and no longer want to do business with that company (surprise!).
- raincole 4y ago
  The same logic applies to Youtube. Do you think Youtube is going to fail soon?
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    The thing is video hosting at scale is still a pain, I have a YouTube account because I have a Google account so they never nagged me to create one, and almost all their content is still free in unlimited amounts. I'm not sure I've ever paid YouTube a dollar directly even though I watch it daily. There may be some similarities (like when they used to let people upload full movies and TV shows), but it is a big stretch to paint YouTube and Medium with the same brush.
    - GrooveSAN 4y ago
      While there definitively _are_ similarities, this example (as far as I’m concerned) is a perfect illustration of a line that shouldn’t be crossed, and that Medium - as opposed to YT - unfortunately did cross. I’m personally trying to avoid Medium links because of the 3-article-max/month paywall applied to my account, but clicking on a YT link isn’t a problem for me. Why? Go figure! I’ll have to deal with the ad(s) - more and more so! - and a request to test YT-premium, but the net benefit is felt like positive for me at the end of the day. And for them too I guess! Medium should invest in UX study, get to know better their targeted users and implement a paywall that is _just_ painful enough so that it doesn’t cause the customers to associate your brand with a negative concept. You can trick us into paying, but do it nice and sweet! We want to feel like you deserve it, not that we got forced.
    - fsckboy 4y ago
      >I have a YouTube account because I have a Google account so they never nagged me to create one hmm, not sure what you mean. I have a gmail account from early early days, and I've never created a youtube account. I would've accepted it if they forced it on me, but given the choice I've never seen a reason to create one. They nag me to create one if I forget and try to upvote, or comment, and they nag me for subscribing on the regular also. perhaps if I created a gmail account later on it would come with youtube?
  - smsm42 4y ago
    How is it the same model? I have been watching YT videos for years and was never denied access to any content.
    - ploum 4y ago
      "This video has been removed because of youtube policies". This is the exact same thing: shitification. Make a cool product at a loss then make it shitier to use to bring as much money as you can before enough users exit to break your network effect. You can even make it last longer by making it as hard as possible for your users to leave. If the process is not entirely clear to you, look at Twitter. (Elon Musk is incredibly not-subtle at this). Everyone of those monopolies are "too big too fail" until it does. Yahoo was like this. Tumblr was like this. Facebook and Twitter were considered as indestructible gods yesterday: they look incredibly fragile now (I’m teaching to CS students and they consider facebook as "the thing used by their grandparents"). Youtube is indestructible? Every single creator is complaining about having video removed/unmonetized while every single person I know is baffle and annoyed at the number of advertising they get. Wait for the moment when people will hear about Peertube. What most people fail to realize is that "failing" is never a big nova disappearance. It’s more subtle, becoming slightly more irrelevant. Yahoo is still there after all. Youtube/Facebook will still be there in 10 years. (while some may even wonder if Twitter will still exist next year). I keep hearing that "mastodon will never replace Twitter" while it already has: there are now more links to toot on HN homepage than links to tweets. What few realize that it is all part of the plan when running a VC business. You have the "invest phase" (everything is free, growth at all cost) then the "cashing phase" (aka "shitification"). VC never invest without an horizon. So, sooner or later, money will flew out and the whole thing will fall. People miss it because the brand usually keep a residual value which keep the light on. That’s why the only long-term sustainable solution is free software. Free software are the only software that can stay successful for several decades (sometimes without major changes in their architecture, which is awesome when you think about it). That’s why, all in all, Medium must fail. It’s all part of the plan. I was lured in myself years ago but I painfully exported all my medium content to my own blog. It took me years to realize that any centralized platform is one signature away of being elon-musked.
  - AmericanOP 4y ago
    Youtube has amazing infotainment right now. Its a super cool emergent phenomenon that there are soo many amazing niches filled by content creators putting out information dense 45 minute+ videos. I don't mind the ads in this case (vs some short clip), and they all seem to have sponsors as well.
  - account42 4y ago
    I'm already less likely to click Youtube links than a (usually Fediverse-hosted) webm/mp4. I think innertia will keep them going for quite a while though but hopefully more sites will start hosting their own videos. And hopefully browsers will pull their head out of their collective behinds and fix the <video> tag so you can do statically hosted adaptive streaming without bringing your own HLS/DASH implementation.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> It’s crazy to me that they seem completely blind to the root problem. I know it's cliché, but the classic quote remains true: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
berniedurfee 4y ago
Bait and switch is the de facto business model of the internet. Burn money to bring in users, then monetize and exit.
lokedhs 4y ago
I've never used these commercial blogging platforms, so the answer to this question may be obvious. Do these platforms provide something useful compared to something like write.as which is based on an open source solution? Is their tools so much better than the open source alternatives?
- doublepg23 4y ago
  It honestly seems like a lowest common denominator play. I currently subscribe to a substack and they are allergic to using a computer beyond the most rudimentary interactions - launching a web browser. (Blocked and Reported specifically)
lenkite 4y ago
Substack doesn't even support markdown yet, right ?
- wkat4242 4y ago
  As far as I can see markdown is very popular in developer circles only - I guess due to GitHub popularizing it. So I could imagine it's not on their radar for something aimed at bloggers - of course some will be developers too but not too many.
yellowapple 4y ago
And Substack's already starting to feel the same way; the incessant prompts to create an account and subscribe to something are the telltale first red flags heralding an intention to put monetization first and utility second.
- AmericanOP 4y ago
  I cant think of a single platform thats doesn't ultimately lose relevance and get replaced that does this. A few days ago people here said their Google trick is appending 'Reddit' to the query. Not Quora. Not other dedicated Q&A sites that have been around as long. Reddit the free (minus the dumbass mobile app prompt.) Same for log-ins. Pinterest? Forget it. Twitter? Just missing a replacement. I don't know what analytics compel these guys to put a gate in front the platform. Just accept what people are willing to give you. I guess they wake up one day and realize everyone just moved on.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    No argument. But how do they make money without these measures? Also Reddit has never been a huge moneymaker, the vast majority of their labor—moderators—work for nothing.
    - boomlinde 4y ago
      > But how do they make money without these measures? By inserting ads every few posts in the feeds, letting users pay for bonus features and letting users pay for bonus features for others as a show of approval. People don't generally go to Reddit to read one single thing that was linked from another site, so the kind of "engagement" platforms like Medium are struggling to achieve through incessant nagging happens a little more naturally. It doesn't have to dedicate a third of the screen area to links and thumbnails of totally unrelated articles, because I'm already in e.g. /r/StarWars where people voluntarily organize exactly what I was interested in reading about when I went there. You also don't have to be as wary of the hustle because unlike Medium, as there's really no straight forward way to make money off of "engagement" with your Reddit posts and replies. You aren't there arguing about some detail in Star Trek TNG S03E14 with /u/dickmonger in order to boost your LinkedIn profile either. Even at its worst—a bunch of idiots dropping vulgar and/or trite oneliners in response to some banal news article experienced entirely through the headline because the article itself is paywalled—it has a sense of honesty and realness that you don't get when people are deliberately trying to culture profitable personas and turning every semblance of original thought into revenue streams. > Also Reddit has never been a huge moneymaker, Is Medium? I don't know that either of these companies make their profit public, but I have a hard time believing that Reddit performs worse than Medium. As someone who ends up reading an article here and there on Medium very occasionally, the changes I see between the visits tell of a company desperately struggling to keep investors happy.
josephd79 4y ago
This is the reason.

jrumbut 4y ago

I assume the plan from day one was make a very appealing platform at a loss, gain a moat from a huge library of good content, then squeeze the profit out of it. It's a deceptive business model, and people feel deceived and no longer want to do business with that company (surprise!).

raincole 4y ago
The same logic applies to Youtube. Do you think Youtube is going to fail soon?
- jrumbut 4y ago
  The thing is video hosting at scale is still a pain, I have a YouTube account because I have a Google account so they never nagged me to create one, and almost all their content is still free in unlimited amounts. I'm not sure I've ever paid YouTube a dollar directly even though I watch it daily. There may be some similarities (like when they used to let people upload full movies and TV shows), but it is a big stretch to paint YouTube and Medium with the same brush.
  - GrooveSAN 4y ago
    While there definitively _are_ similarities, this example (as far as I’m concerned) is a perfect illustration of a line that shouldn’t be crossed, and that Medium - as opposed to YT - unfortunately did cross. I’m personally trying to avoid Medium links because of the 3-article-max/month paywall applied to my account, but clicking on a YT link isn’t a problem for me. Why? Go figure! I’ll have to deal with the ad(s) - more and more so! - and a request to test YT-premium, but the net benefit is felt like positive for me at the end of the day. And for them too I guess! Medium should invest in UX study, get to know better their targeted users and implement a paywall that is _just_ painful enough so that it doesn’t cause the customers to associate your brand with a negative concept. You can trick us into paying, but do it nice and sweet! We want to feel like you deserve it, not that we got forced.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    >I have a YouTube account because I have a Google account so they never nagged me to create one hmm, not sure what you mean. I have a gmail account from early early days, and I've never created a youtube account. I would've accepted it if they forced it on me, but given the choice I've never seen a reason to create one. They nag me to create one if I forget and try to upvote, or comment, and they nag me for subscribing on the regular also. perhaps if I created a gmail account later on it would come with youtube?
- smsm42 4y ago
  How is it the same model? I have been watching YT videos for years and was never denied access to any content.
  - ploum 4y ago
    "This video has been removed because of youtube policies". This is the exact same thing: shitification. Make a cool product at a loss then make it shitier to use to bring as much money as you can before enough users exit to break your network effect. You can even make it last longer by making it as hard as possible for your users to leave. If the process is not entirely clear to you, look at Twitter. (Elon Musk is incredibly not-subtle at this). Everyone of those monopolies are "too big too fail" until it does. Yahoo was like this. Tumblr was like this. Facebook and Twitter were considered as indestructible gods yesterday: they look incredibly fragile now (I’m teaching to CS students and they consider facebook as "the thing used by their grandparents"). Youtube is indestructible? Every single creator is complaining about having video removed/unmonetized while every single person I know is baffle and annoyed at the number of advertising they get. Wait for the moment when people will hear about Peertube. What most people fail to realize is that "failing" is never a big nova disappearance. It’s more subtle, becoming slightly more irrelevant. Yahoo is still there after all. Youtube/Facebook will still be there in 10 years. (while some may even wonder if Twitter will still exist next year). I keep hearing that "mastodon will never replace Twitter" while it already has: there are now more links to toot on HN homepage than links to tweets. What few realize that it is all part of the plan when running a VC business. You have the "invest phase" (everything is free, growth at all cost) then the "cashing phase" (aka "shitification"). VC never invest without an horizon. So, sooner or later, money will flew out and the whole thing will fall. People miss it because the brand usually keep a residual value which keep the light on. That’s why the only long-term sustainable solution is free software. Free software are the only software that can stay successful for several decades (sometimes without major changes in their architecture, which is awesome when you think about it). That’s why, all in all, Medium must fail. It’s all part of the plan. I was lured in myself years ago but I painfully exported all my medium content to my own blog. It took me years to realize that any centralized platform is one signature away of being elon-musked.
- AmericanOP 4y ago
  Youtube has amazing infotainment right now. Its a super cool emergent phenomenon that there are soo many amazing niches filled by content creators putting out information dense 45 minute+ videos. I don't mind the ads in this case (vs some short clip), and they all seem to have sponsors as well.
- account42 4y ago
  I'm already less likely to click Youtube links than a (usually Fediverse-hosted) webm/mp4. I think innertia will keep them going for quite a while though but hopefully more sites will start hosting their own videos. And hopefully browsers will pull their head out of their collective behinds and fix the <video> tag so you can do statically hosted adaptive streaming without bringing your own HLS/DASH implementation.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

> It’s crazy to me that they seem completely blind to the root problem. I know it's cliché, but the classic quote remains true: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

berniedurfee 4y ago

Bait and switch is the de facto business model of the internet. Burn money to bring in users, then monetize and exit.

lokedhs 4y ago

I've never used these commercial blogging platforms, so the answer to this question may be obvious. Do these platforms provide something useful compared to something like write.as which is based on an open source solution? Is their tools so much better than the open source alternatives?

doublepg23 4y ago
It honestly seems like a lowest common denominator play. I currently subscribe to a substack and they are allergic to using a computer beyond the most rudimentary interactions - launching a web browser. (Blocked and Reported specifically)

lenkite 4y ago

Substack doesn't even support markdown yet, right ?

wkat4242 4y ago
As far as I can see markdown is very popular in developer circles only - I guess due to GitHub popularizing it. So I could imagine it's not on their radar for something aimed at bloggers - of course some will be developers too but not too many.

yellowapple 4y ago

And Substack's already starting to feel the same way; the incessant prompts to create an account and subscribe to something are the telltale first red flags heralding an intention to put monetization first and utility second.

AmericanOP 4y ago
I cant think of a single platform thats doesn't ultimately lose relevance and get replaced that does this. A few days ago people here said their Google trick is appending 'Reddit' to the query. Not Quora. Not other dedicated Q&A sites that have been around as long. Reddit the free (minus the dumbass mobile app prompt.) Same for log-ins. Pinterest? Forget it. Twitter? Just missing a replacement. I don't know what analytics compel these guys to put a gate in front the platform. Just accept what people are willing to give you. I guess they wake up one day and realize everyone just moved on.
- tomcam 4y ago
  No argument. But how do they make money without these measures? Also Reddit has never been a huge moneymaker, the vast majority of their labor—moderators—work for nothing.
  - boomlinde 4y ago
    > But how do they make money without these measures? By inserting ads every few posts in the feeds, letting users pay for bonus features and letting users pay for bonus features for others as a show of approval. People don't generally go to Reddit to read one single thing that was linked from another site, so the kind of "engagement" platforms like Medium are struggling to achieve through incessant nagging happens a little more naturally. It doesn't have to dedicate a third of the screen area to links and thumbnails of totally unrelated articles, because I'm already in e.g. /r/StarWars where people voluntarily organize exactly what I was interested in reading about when I went there. You also don't have to be as wary of the hustle because unlike Medium, as there's really no straight forward way to make money off of "engagement" with your Reddit posts and replies. You aren't there arguing about some detail in Star Trek TNG S03E14 with /u/dickmonger in order to boost your LinkedIn profile either. Even at its worst—a bunch of idiots dropping vulgar and/or trite oneliners in response to some banal news article experienced entirely through the headline because the article itself is paywalled—it has a sense of honesty and realness that you don't get when people are deliberately trying to culture profitable personas and turning every semblance of original thought into revenue streams. > Also Reddit has never been a huge moneymaker, Is Medium? I don't know that either of these companies make their profit public, but I have a hard time believing that Reddit performs worse than Medium. As someone who ends up reading an article here and there on Medium very occasionally, the changes I see between the visits tell of a company desperately struggling to keep investors happy.

josephd79 4y ago

This is the reason.