Re:Medium's Evan Williams to Publishers: Your Website Is Toast
by mark_l_watson on Wednesday September 16, 2015 @10:53AM
(#10227036)
As a general philosophy, I like fine grained production of content. That is, lots of small independent developers, publishers, writers, etc.
For somethings, like giving Google specific permissions to make my life easier, I am willing to go with huge companies when I want things like Google Now to work. It is worth the privacy hit (sometimes) to have voice interfaces to my calendar, what music I want to listen to, generating quick notes, warnings of air flight delays, etc.
But, for content, I like to go to the sources (like democracynow.org) not the aggregators. While I enjoy reading some content on Medium, I can't help but think the writers are better off having their own domain and work long term to develop their personal brand. I think that social media like Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter have value for publishing references to your work that is on your site, on your domain. I think of social media as micro-blogging: stuff that is short and doesn't derserve a full length article on your own site. Social media is also great for pointing people to good writing on people's sites.
So, I would say go with huge companies (Apple for Siri, Google for Google Now, Microsoft for Cortana) for specific services that have value. For everything else, support small producers.
For somethings, like giving Google specific permissions to make my life easier, I am willing to go with huge companies when I want things like Google Now to work. It is worth the privacy hit (sometimes) to have voice interfaces to my calendar, what music I want to listen to, generating quick notes, warnings of air flight delays, etc.
But, for content, I like to go to the sources (like democracynow.org) not the aggregators. While I enjoy reading some content on Medium, I can't help but think the writers are better off having their own domain and work long term to develop their personal brand. I think that social media like Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter have value for publishing references to your work that is on your site, on your domain. I think of social media as micro-blogging: stuff that is short and doesn't derserve a full length article on your own site. Social media is also great for pointing people to good writing on people's sites.
So, I would say go with huge companies (Apple for Siri, Google for Google Now, Microsoft for Cortana) for specific services that have value. For everything else, support small producers.