Advice a sales coach gave me was “sales is sorting, not convincing.”
I always found that put me in the right headspace to focus on listening first, then being clear. Whether they sort themselves into a yes or no is on them.
It really made me think of Dopplr, which was one of the delighful and beautiful Web 2 apps that never quite broke out.
The thing that feels different between now and Web 2 is that the Internet is so much bigger. So you can build an app that has a niche and it can still be pretty big. I was on the early beta for this app and it's great, especially if networking and travel are a big part of your life. I honestly have no idea if it even needs to be bigger than that although I know it can be.
I’m not surprised. There had been some talks among various platforms to form a coalition and the reason we (Medium) thought they broke down was because people were trying to cut individual deals. I think this is overall bad for the internet because it cuts creators out of the decision and compensation.
Why is this on us (I'm Medium's CEO)? We have control over our own recommendations, and they have gotten a lot better. But people seem to take the worst articles, post them over here, and the people here upvote them. That seems like a problem with HN.
Hey Tony, from my perspective, I think there are a couple things at play with peoples sentiment about Medium.
I think part of it is how aggressive the monetization is. That isn't to say that your competitors, and a huge swathe of publishers aren't doing the same thing. It seems the value prop is getting rid of all the noise. That can be a difficult sell. Publishing is in a weird place. For writing about current events or topics in the zeitgeist, the internet is flooded with articles re-tracing the same points.
I think the other part is that a similar problem that every platform that allows its user to monetize UGC, it attracts large numbers of people who want to game the system (or well meaning people who still exhibit spammy behavior). So those people upload poor articles and share them to as many places as they can to try to capture some ad rev. They end up flooding somewhere like HN, and people sour on the platform instead of the person who uploaded it.
I don't think that is unique to medium, or even unusual in the publishing space. It seems more likely that Medium is big platform, so people see it more often, and more often associate it with these problems.
We definitely attract a lot of bad UGC. Not even just bad, a lot of it now is fraudulent AI generated trash. You got me interested in what the volume is of Medium links on HN. I think it's about 10 a day according to Algolia's HN search.
That doesn't seem so bad. So I'm wondering if there is some toxic overlap of what is bad on Medium also does well here, and what is good on Medium fails here.
For example, I saw that the 3.3 release of Dart got posted on Medium and then here yesterday. I think that's unambiguously good given that it's written by the creators of Dart. But, it's also kind of boring and specific to a small subset of developers.
Whether or not it is fair for it to be on you, it still is. Because it is your problem whether or not Medium succeeds, not ours. Even if you are 100% correct, and HN's attitude is completely incorrect and unfair... that don't hurt us none. It does hurt you. (If you care about us as a potential market segment.)
So it is on you because you are the one who needs the brand to be viewed positively.
Specifically, it is on you to put on a product hat, come understand what we feel, why we feel it, and what might make us more interested in your product. Or not. Your company, your choice.
Fwiw, I didn't say fair. I think we all have the same goal which is that we want the front page of Hacker News to have great links. I've been a community member here since 2007 (geez, that's a long time) and have checked it basically every single day other than the very rare days where I haven't had internet access.
The trope we use for bad articles that used to do well on Medium are "X is dead." They are always written by people who don't have nearly the life experience to call it. But they invite reactions. They do less well now on Medium because we redid our recommendations to have human curators in the loop. I would want the same thing to happen here and I honestly don't understand why a community that is generally so good at boosting high quality articles falls for them.
I think the problem with medium is that there are a lot of low-quality no use for anything articles on the platform. May be you can do some sort of moderation to ensure good articles are present, not sure if it’s against your policies.
Also, another reason which annoys me is the signin to read the article. Why do I have to sign in to read an article everytime? I think this trend overtime created a reflux such that every time I see a medium link, I do not click it.
Loved the platform earlier, I hope you turn it around!
I think this comment could have been phrased a bit better. People on HN already have a terrible impression of Medium and this comment only serves to worsen that impression, regardless of your intentions. And saying that your recommendations have gotten a lot better is not very reassuring, qualitative feedback doesn't mean much when it comes from a person at the company that makes the product. Its like if Elon Musk said that X has gotten better since he took over it, that kind of feedback only really works if it comes from people outside the company (like HN).
I think there is something to this. We have a long term lease for what is now an empty floor at 799 Market in SF and our landlord will not let us buy our way out of the lease, even at 100% of remaining rent. There are about 120 seats on our floor and about 1000 in the building. I’ve heard only sixty people use the building in a given day. So the usage rate is much much lower than the occupancy rate, i.e. we count as occupants even with zero usage.
OMG we had half of the 4th floor of that building on sublease when the pandemic hit (and for 2 years prior). The week of the first lockdown in 2020 we were all set to sign a new long term lease for an entire upper floor and half of the one below. Lockdown happened and we told them "let's just hold off on this for a bit". They were, of course, disappointed and desperate to get us to sign.
We held off, and it quickly became obvious the pandemic was going to be a long term thing. So when our sublease expired in September 2020 we moved out and have been fully remote and distributed ever since. We lucked out and dodged a bullet by not signing a long term lease for more space than we needed at the absolute top of the market.
Granted, we were already 60% remote at the time so it wasn't a completely massive shift. But that's it, we're remote and distributed and we're never looking back. Good bye central office!!!
This impulse isn't true for us (I'm the CEO) and so I've wondered why this accusation toward management is so common.
I suspect, but obviously don't know for sure, that merely making use of the real estate doesn't factor at all. It's more "come into the office because that's how I know how to manage people" and "somethings actually are hard to do remote."
We are productive remote for some things, but then get stuck on tricky issues that seem to get solved instantly when we are together. So we solved that by gathering twice a year at company retreats and having budget for more mini-gatherings. But our feeling is that going back to the office will never happen.
I always found that put me in the right headspace to focus on listening first, then being clear. Whether they sort themselves into a yes or no is on them.