Comment by owenwil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by owenwil | Hacker News Reader

I posted this thing on Twitter, but just to be clear about what's going on here: they've replied and said their terms of service were not really intended to be harsh, they don't want your content, and that they'll revise them (https://twitter.com/ow/status/1105462220517969920). One day when Twitter actually implements tweet editing, these types of threads can start with a bit more clarity.

That said: Medium, as an independent writer, has supported me more than any news organization ever has. They currently pay top-of-market rates, on time, and pitch me stories/opportunities regularly. I haven't had a positive relationship with a media company like this in a long while, and it really seems like the work they're doing is making positive moves in the community/content you see as well.

It's hard to know who to side with here, because betting on a platform as a business is a really bad idea, and Medium has pivoted _a lot_ in the past, but at least they're trying to build a better model for both the reader _and_ the writer of the content.

I finally black listed (blocksite'd) medium because of their UI. Black listing helps me remember not to click on attractive/interesting links to medium hosted articles.

David from Hackernoon. We won't be doing a pop up ad to force login or a paywall on Hacker Noon 2.0. Hope you can consider us as an exemption from your blacklist!

That's interesting to hear. Out of curiosity, how much writing do you do on Medium vs other places (eg a personal, non-medium blog)?

I'm in the process of resurrecting my own blog, and I've been wondering about how much I should blog on other platforms for readership/exposure as opposed to my own self-hosted blog.

I wrote several software development articles for Hacker Noon on Medium and I was able to accumulate a decent number of followers. I feel that Hacker Noon contributed the most value in terms of reaching the right users. Medium just capitalizes preexisting network effects and adds no real value.

I see the same dynamic but credit the exact reverse. Hacker Noon accumulated followers by aggregating articles that were already published on Medium. They were publishing 30 articles a day without adding any editorial value. That got the flywheel going where since they were a big publication, authors would submit directly to them.

But all they did was aggregate Medium users and authors without adding any additional value.

FYI - Tony is medium advisor. Unsure why he is making it his job to make uninformed comments like this. This is David from Hackernoon, letting you know that without the use of Medium at my last job, I recruited, edited and published 400+ contributing writers with the use of Wordpress. When I started there, the company started with no brand, 5 employees and barely any seed money. When I left, it had 120 employees, $60M+ in Venture capital, a brand everyone in the recruiting space knew, and I couldn't publish contributors fast enough. Medium helped grow Hacker Noon, but if what Tony is saying were true, there would be thousands of publications just as big as Hacker Noon building with Medium's content management system. Also, most stories published with us are not already on Medium, we have to painstakingly onboard them to be a Medium writer while Medium does little to distribute any of our stories anymore. We've spent thousands of work hours educating people on ppl on how to use this content management system.

I'm speaking as a publisher on medium. You know that David.

It's true that initally, Hacker Noon was just picking articles that were already published. My point still stands though that this added a lot of value for me as a content producer because those same articles didn't get much attention before they were included in Hacker Noon.

Then I started publishing straight to Hacker Noon because I knew that my article would for sure at least get a couple of thousand reads no matter what; and the most useful articles ended up getting almost 100K reads (highly trageted too; almost all software developers). I don't think it could have happened without Hacker Noon.

As an open source developer who spent thousands of hours working on a project without making profit from it, I can attest that in the current system, it does not matter who does the actual work. It's who can capitalize on that work who takes the profit. I'm pretty sure that Medium has profited from hundreds of open source projects as well. There is no point to try to moralize this.

If that's the case, why didn't they just start off with hackernoon.com? They chose to host on Medium because that's where they thought they'd reach the biggest audience.

ah looking back on what could have been... when medium started it did have much simpler experience than wordpress for managing the day to day of the site and its contributors.

>betting on a platform as a business is a really bad idea

I can't really think of any business that isn't built or at least highly reliant on someone else's platform right now.

Uber/Lyft are hopelessly dependent on iOS and Android. And that goes for any business that is heavily reliant on their mobile app.

Then everyone else is reliant at leadt on the credit card networks to process their payments. They would go out of business overnight if the processors decided to cut them off.

>Uber/Lyft are hopelessly dependent on iOS and Android

At least uber isn't, and maybe more recently lyft also moved out. You can use the uber mobile website to hail cabs. I don't have google play services or the uber app.

I have used Uber from a browser from my laptop. It works but not quite as well. I couldnt tip, and it refused a valid credit card once with some weird error message. So I wouldnt recommend the non-app versions if you're pressed for time etc.

Hey David from Hackernoon here. The technology industry is very consolidated. It's easier to get a small business started, but when it grows, it's easier for another technology you depend on to change its terms. In my case, I was content running a bootstapped business that barely made enough to fund two jobs (hacker noon in 2017 & 2018), but my revenue stream was cut off by pivots from my content management system. With an enormous cost of switching, we turned to our readers to fund the movement into our own infrastructure: https://www.startengine.com/hackernoon Now, I have a small team, and win/lose/or-draw, I'm thrilled to have the future of my business not tied to the fate of medium.

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