Medium, in my mind, faces the same problem as YouTube did (still does). Their entire growth potential is subject to them transitioning from a content hosting platform to a content destination. YouTube will not survive if it remains a portal for people to link & host videos or search for specific pieces of content. They must train users to browse YouTube.com (as one does Facebook) and rely on it for consistent content delivery. Amazon has managed to do this. Medium will have to do so as well. Once they have their users captive, they can offer many VAS ranging from sponsored posts to premium pay-per-read content.

I had organized my subscriptions into a series of groups, which was a pretty hidden feature that they subsequently removed.

I have since replicated that by putting everything into a series of folders in the google replacement RSS reader, innoreader, I have been using.

YouTube sort of gets me to stay on the site by autoplaying vaguely similar videos and randomly inserting totally off topic videos that match my previous viewing history.

I feel like this scatterbrained approach to throwing videos at users does very little to foster go to the site out of the blue habituation, though it does make the site somewhat sticky once you are there.

I don't know if Medium can do anything similar to get the habituation working, maybe and editor's choice curation system, but that seems to fail compared to aggregators like HN or reddit. They could probably promote some stickiness by appending full stories right at the bottom of existing ones via infinite scrolling, if that even works better than just having the typical 'click here to see the top 10 secrets of X' junk at the bottom.

Here's a video by a youtuber about all this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4

I believe the idea of moving towards a more AI/ML based recommendation system is interesting because it frees Youtube from the burden of defining what is worthy of being featured (and featuring everything that's relevant to each particular user). In a way it could democratize content discovery. But I don't see it working as well as it could be.

I have a feeling that Youtube may want to be able to promote certain youtube "stars" because, let's be real, they are the ones driving revenue. But I chose to believe a world where content discovery is more fair is possible.

I will say that this has less to do with the shitty way subscription works nowadays. The idea behind that is: if users want to follow certain creators, they should be able to. Moving that towards a AI/ML system seems just inefficient at achieving that goal. I don't know the rationale behind the decision here.

I thought that had already happened. That's how I use YouTube and I know the younger generation is doing it as well.

More relevant is how often you come across Medium articles outside of the context of HN - occasionally via twitter, and that's about it.

Still, they must have been able to show something is going right.

That isn't sardony. There are many startups/VCs who use Medium solely because they want to be "thought-leaders" unironically. As a result, the quality of Medium posts is highly variable.

I think medium is an excellent service. the trending articles definitely needs work though

I also like that you can easily have your essay included in other peoples publications [1] or ask if you can include someone elses in yours.

I would pay for access to good publications but I am not really your average user.

[1] https://medium.com/swlh/the-problem-with-problems-47ee63bb35...

Medium is content-first. All blogs should arguably be content-first, very few are. Most wordpress blogs a) look like crap, b) obscures content, and c) renders slow, in order to accommodate the design that contributes to a) and b).

I'm not a writer, but from what I understand, the back-end is also content-first, writing first -- simple, elegant, no clutter.

The lack of theming is a bonus. Just as design/layout of an essay in New York Magazine is largely out of your hands, and taken care of by the publisher, so it is with Medium. Evidence suggests that the vast majority of writers are better off that way (see point above).

Ghost and many of the static site generators offer similar benefits, but with some caveats: they all need theming, and I'm not sure if any of them really come with something that in sum is as good as/better than Medium. Personally I think even Medium is a bit heavy -- but it is way better than then current mess that is Blogspot.

If your goal is to write/publish and not worry too much about design/layout you could do a lot worse than Medium. Many do.

I wouldn't be surprised if Medium differentiated/launched curated sub-sites/"magazines" that featured content from Medium. They could have some premium stuff that is authored by only paid authors, mix and match, and have a X articles/month-for-free model a la New York Times etc.

If the can get a large number of writers, and a large sub-section of good/great writers -- monetizing shouldn't be that hard. I hope. And I'm guessing that's what the investors hope too. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Medium turns out to be one of the first "native digital" publishers -- embracing the strengths of digital distribution, rather than fighting it. Eg: maybe people are willing to pay for content, and one can simply rid oneself of the dependency on advertising.

We'll see.

I don't think Evan have a good track record of turning startups into profitable businesses, but he does have some great product ideas.

I really hope this one will be good for him but like you I have my doubts.

From the writer's perspective: 1) interface is clean and easy to write on - easy to format things, embedd video, embedd pictures, etc 2) easy to share drafts and get edits from others 3) 5%-10% of traffic comes internally from medium.com, so helps with distribution 4) SEO's well and works out of the box without me having to set anything up.

PS - I work at Greylock Partners which invested in Medium but I didn't have any say with the investment decision nor do I have to use Medium. I just like writing on there.

Just read the notes from the first two classes. I think you are doing a great job of carrying on the Blake Masters tradition of accurate, well-organized, easy-to-read notes. Please keep it up, and thank you!

C'est la vie.

Actually, I think that's kind of the point.

But I like the curated front page/top articles. I will go there to specifically check that page out when I have a spare moment.

There's probably a price point that I would pay to have that list sent to my inbox daily.

Exactly! :)

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/war-is-boring-is-moving-417...