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Comment by symlinkk | Hacker News Reader

It's ridiculous how much of a bubble the web is in right now. Do you really think they well EVER earn $57 million back? In the age of ad blockers, ad networks are dying. How else will they monetize? Only time will tell.

Also, why is Medium so popular? It really doesn't have anything new or different than any blogging platform before it...almost any of the readers of HN could probably create a similar service if we wanted to, so why is Medium so popular? Maybe I'm just really out of touch but I just don't see the value in these websites. Sure they're popular now but for how long? Honestly, how much of their popularity is just because it's the "cool" "new" place to post on, and because everyone else is doing it so I should too?

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I think a big part of it's popularity is the polish of the design and the UX.

It's kind of useless, but also, you have to admit, nicer to read there than most other places... And since VCs have TONS of money because bubble etc... It gets traction

I am also convinced that the founders being so connected allows them to raise about 10x what they really deserve

> why is Medium so popular?

It's not. I only have heard about it b/c of the YC connection, reading articles here posted from Medium.

It's popular in the Twitterverse as the go-to longform blog platform for people without a personally hosted blog who also want to avoid Tumblr. A big reason for that is probably because a Twitter co-founder created it. ;)

I heard about it before I even browsed HN or new what YC was. Mostly I read the "War is Boring" articles, specifically by David Axe.

One strange thing about the Medium-Twitter link is that most Medium stories I come across can't actually be posted on Twitter via the Twitter client for OSX because the @ symbol in the URL breaks. And the OSX client is how I mostly interact with Twitter.

If you click "Share" you should be able to share on Twitter and it gives you a Twitter-friendly URL to use.

>"they will ever earn back $57million"

>"Why is medium so popular"

These things might be related.

>"almost any of the HN readers could create a similar service"

Same could be said about Airbnb. There's more to a business than the technology.

Yahoo spent $1.1 billion on Tumblr, so in theory you could see a similar deal. And of course it depends on what they do with the $57 million, but yes it feels very dot.com bubble.

I don't think you can quite compare Medium to Tumblr. Different market, different users, different product, different end result. That is like doing a linear comparison of Water to Ice Cubes.

> How else will they monetize?

Native advertising, that's the only way I see it happening.

Just because Apple let some people use ad block last week? A bit fickle!

Stay a little level headed about it, Medium's becoming one of the big guys, they're getting a lot of page views, there's a good chance they'll find a way to monetize and make that money back.

This is actually one where I'm not surprised at the cash.

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