that's very true
Exactly this. Medium was great at what it did, but having raised $160M+ in funding and being valued at several billion dollars they simply could not continue to be a simply blogging platform while also making enough money to keep investors happy. And all their bets to become profitable just ended up alienating their users and writers.
Re:Ask HN: Why Did Medium.com “Fail"?
by tonystubblebine on Friday February 10, 2023 @05:51PM
(#34747106)
Never had a valuation that high.
YouTube has become pretty bad IMO.. All the ads and Google data mining.
Without a suite of adblockers and sponsorblock it's unusable now. I hate video content anyway so I wouldn't sign up for a subscription. But every time I get referred there I'm appalled how bad it's become.
A product is great. The company providing the product raises lots of money.
Investors want a return on their investment and the founders want a big payday. So the company starts adding lots of features to increase sign-ups, conversions, and revenue.
But these features often poison the user experience. Even as lots numbers go up in the near-term, the product withers and dies as users defect.