
Medium Raises $57M - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/28/medium-raises-54m-will-hold-event-on-october-7th-to-announce-new-features-and-partnerships/
======
rm_-rf_slash
Does anybody here post regularly on Medium? Can anyone name off the top of
their heads their favorite writers on Medium? Would anybody pay for Medium?

I like Medium as a platform but there doesn't seem to be much beyond the
occasional interesting essay or startup humblebrag puff piece about why
culture is more than free donuts or whatever.

My problem with Medium is there is no way of establishing a reputation for
quality. If everyone can post there then you're gonna run into some garbage,
no matter what the sorting algorithm says are the "hot" stories. So without
site wide quality control all it'll take are a few bad articles to bring down
the perceived average quality.

So then what's in it for the writers? Build up an audience on a convenient,
erm, Medium, then...leave? How else will _they_ make money?

~~~
ngoel36
Look at the front page on HN. At any given time, at least 2-4+ of the top 30
posts are written on Medium. There doesn't have to be a rhyme or reason (why
did people gravitate to WhatsApp or Slack, when hundreds of others existed
before them).

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.

~~~
benjaminjackman
I was starting to use YouTube like that until they went and totally hosed all
their subscriptions to be based on some sort of algorithm that rarely shows me
what I want to see.

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.

~~~
iraphael
Youtube also faces a big challenge with incentives IMO. Obviously
discoverability of videos matter. But depending on how the decision to feature
a video is made, Youtube can (and has) incentivized content creators to change
their content to fit that box. It's the reason why most videos in my front
page are click bait, with really obnoxious thumbnails, and a lot of times with
all caps titles.

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

------
temuze
Step 1: Found successful startup (Blogger). Sell four years later to Google.

Step 2: Wait ten years. Then, repeat step 1 with similar idea but different
branding (Medium).

At this rate, we have about 6 years until Ev does step 2 for Twitter. Maybe
it'll be called Tiny :)

~~~
byoung2
I've noticed this same pattern with other founders, notably Dennis Crowley
with Dodgeball (location-based social network founded in 2000, sold to Google
in 2005) and Foursquare (location based social network with different
branding).

~~~
DannoHung
To be fair to him, Google drove Dodgeball straight into the ground.

To be mean to him: Deciding to split Foursquare into Yelp-lite and a shitty
social network was a terrible, terrible idea.

~~~
austenallred
Google also drove Blogger straight into the ground (though more slowly)

~~~
CuttlefishXXX
The absolutely worst two things which happened to Blogger during the last few
years are, IMO:

1\. What I percieve to be excessive use of JS. You can't even load a blog post
there (well, at least, couldn't last time I visited a dot-blogspot site)
without an on-page spinner and a bunch of stuff apparently happening in the
background.

2\. The tld-redirect crap. Admitedly, I had actually thought a similar
mechanism to be benefitial prior to seeing an actual implementation of it but
I mean, come on, does this not annoy others? What's the advantage of that
anyway? Google is capable of geographical load balancing with IP addresses
alone just fine, what's the deal?

Disclaimer: These are my end-user reactions. I have never operated at the
scale Blogger does so there may be reasons I am not aware of.

~~~
xerophyte12932
Exactly. Blogs are mostly text sites and one would expect such to open at
rapid speeds. That's one of the things I like about Svbtle, they load the blog
as one single request/response with all the text, styles, JS(barely
noticeable) inline making for very rapid load times

------
symlinkk
It's ridiculous how much of a bubble the web is in right now. Do you really
think they well EVER earn $57 million back? In the age of ad blockers, ad
networks are dying. How else will they monetize? Only time will tell.

Also, why is Medium so popular? It really doesn't have anything new or
different than any blogging platform before it...almost any of the readers of
HN could probably create a similar service if we wanted to, so why is Medium
so popular? Maybe I'm just really out of touch but I just don't see the value
in these websites. Sure they're popular now but for how long? Honestly, how
much of their popularity is just because it's the "cool" "new" place to post
on, and because everyone else is doing it so I should too?

~~~
orthoganol
> why is Medium so popular?

It's not. I only have heard about it b/c of the YC connection, reading
articles here posted from Medium.

~~~
Nadya
It's popular in the Twitterverse as the go-to longform blog platform for
people without a personally hosted blog who _also_ want to avoid Tumblr. A big
reason for that is probably because a Twitter co-founder created it. ;)

I heard about it before I even browsed HN or new what YC was. Mostly I read
the "War is Boring" articles, specifically by David Axe.

~~~
prawn
One strange thing about the Medium-Twitter link is that most Medium stories I
come across can't actually be posted on Twitter via the Twitter client for OSX
because the @ symbol in the URL breaks. And the OSX client is how I mostly
interact with Twitter.

~~~
Nadya
If you click "Share" you should be able to share on Twitter and it gives you a
Twitter-friendly URL to use.

------
forrestthewoods
I still fucking hate Medium. Why? It's bad for content creators. Why? Because
url previews on HN/Reddit/etc say medium.com. Every damn medium.com link looks
the same as others. No way to build your brand or identity. For the longest
time the author's name wasn't even visible until the very teeny bottom.

I'm pro-author and pro-content creator. I don't believe that Medium is.
They're just pro-Medium. Our interests are not aligned. Which is a shame.

------
brianstorms
I read today that the estimated valuation of Medium is $400 million. I find
that astounding.

Bear in mind that Bezos bought The Washington Post, no slouch in the
journalism world, for $250 million not too long ago.

How big is Medium's traffic? Monthly uniques? Ad revenue? Or any revenue?

Where is the _there_ there?

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halcyondaze
"On what it will do with the money? Doyle says it will go to making Medium
“the dominant pipeline for connecting quality content and conversation,” which
is pretty broad." \- The content is decent, but the conversation aspect of
Medium has a long, long way to go before it comes close to many other
platforms.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I agree. The ability to discuss paragraphs individually is fun but it seems
the unwritten rule is to keep discussion there to a minimum or else it
clutters your work.

------
irl_zebra
It's an interesting service, though I can't personally see putting that much
of my sweat into 2,000 word blog posts that I don't own.

But what is their game plan to monetize?

~~~
Karunamon
I don't know who started this meme that you don't own content that you put on
Medium, but it's totally wrong:

[https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-
service-9db0094a1e...](https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-
service-9db0094a1e0f)

 _You own the rights to the content you post on Medium. We don’t claim
ownership over any of it. However, by posting or transferring content to
Medium, you give us permission to use your content solely to do the things we
need to do to provide Medium Services, including, without limitation, storing,
displaying, reproducing, and distributing your content. This may include
promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader
broadcast, distribution, or publication._

This is identical to the ToS for any hosted blogging service such as Blogger
or Wordpress - you have to give them a license to your words for the site to
do their job.

~~~
6stringmerc
True, and practically speaking it's pretty standard from what I've seen in
writing fields. Very similar to music such as on Soundcloud.

I think the only 'hangup' that might be in the conditions would be "without
limitation" insofar as when does "the things we need to do to provide Medium
Services" conflict with the content producer being compensated. As in, if
"partner companies" and Medium are engaged in some compensation / revenue
undertaking, at what point does an author on the platform have some "say" in
the way the content gets used...e.g. a person posts a beautiful poem, Medium
can print that poem in an ad in the New York Times to self-promote, and the
author seemingly gets nothing, which doesn't seem appropriate.

Not saying that's the intent or anything, but I think healthy suspicion is
helpful to all parties for clarity.

~~~
mst
(riffing on your comments, not disagreeing)

I'm looking at that and thinking the way they've phrased it means that
'without limitation' is required to avoid exposing themselves to lawsuits over
details, and 'solely' is meant as their promise to the users.

So ... healthy suspicion good, but I feel like they've tried to set it up so
that they can only be sued for violating the letter of the agreement, but can
(and expect to) be publically excoriated for violating the spirit.

Whether they'll continue to live up to these ideals over time is (aaand we're
back to healthy suspicion :) inevitably an open question, but I think the
intent is to make it clear that those ideals do exist now in a way that allows
us to hold them to it later.

~~~
6stringmerc
Excellent point, and thanks for elaborating on the "spirit" component as it
relates to the phrasing. I'm on board with you in that it's a functional way
of doing business, legally speaking, but could benefit from public oversight
(e.g. reputation).

------
on_
Twitter is starting to look something like Reuters real-time reporting network
and event notifications. It basically replaces the headlines of the newspaper
people used to see while walking down the street. It is a notification service
which makes it a great platform.

Medium is trying to be the actual body paragraph of the newspaper[0]. They
seek to provide content curation, search and monetization. They provide the
analysis of the interesting topics you see on twitter. Twitter is diverse with
people like Kim Kardashian to Noam Chomsky. Medium will let these people
explain themselves in long form and introduce you to similar thinkers. For
Noam Chomsky that might be other linguists or libertarians and for Kim
Kardashian it might be a piece of cardboard, or goldfish. I don't know what
the strategy is, but I would say 20/80 odds they crack the code. Long odds,
but better than most start ups face. They need to:

* Find a way to pay users for content, or create a great incentive for them to continue delivering high quality content to them for free.

* Find a way to organize and display the content.

* Get people to pay for it.

Obviously a tall order. They are trying to be the people who figure out how to
monetize without advertising traffic. I have no idea what they told investors,
and frankly Ev Williams could say he was remaking Pets.com and he would get
funded, but I suspect they have an idea for monetization.

[0] A newspaper was sort of link an internet website. It was made of something
called paper and was delivered by actual people to your door. People used to
use their hands to scroll through it. Push notifications and updates took ~24
hours to reach newspapers. Not much else is known about these ancient
artifacts.

~~~
mst
> They are trying to be the people who figure out how to monetize without
> advertising traffic.

While I remain skeptical of this idea, I really really want it to be true.

------
api
It's really a brilliant model: a magazine with unpaid writers. Get everyone to
write high quality articles for nothing, then curate and monetize.

~~~
jqm
"high quality articles" appears to be the challenge here....

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rememberlenny
Techcrunch and their Medium post have conflicting numbers.

Medium: 57M

Techcrunch: 54M

Edit: Thanks for updating the title

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nstart
Could they be prepping for the war against ads and trackers? There's been a
bit of talk about having a central paywall of sorts. One where I put money
into a service and that service is responsible for distributing the money to
the sites that I visit (that have signed up with said paywall service). Kind
of like what Google has as an alternative to seeing its ads (can't recall the
name). Medium would be an ideal platform for this. Put a monthly fee into
medium (maybe you choose how much), or just give your credit card and set a
cap on how much you can spend per month, and then when you visit posts on
medium, the authors get paid out based on visits and percentage read (or
something similar). That could have the potential to upend the indie blogger
market right now. They'd have distribution, managed systems, and would get
paid for their work.

------
jug
I miss international support on Medium. Or maybe recognition? But also in
terms of features, like national "communities" or filters. I've thought about
posting there but recognize that brand as one aimed for quality long form
posts, but can't be assed to write all that in English. :( I want to be able
to visit a medium.com/ger, medium.com/swe, etc.

It's seemingly not even a topic brought up there in a FAQ or so. Funny, since
I think it would open up many new markets.

------
gukov
I wonder if the revamped Facebook Notes made Medium act quicker.

~~~
itsyogesh
I was actually thinking about this. With facebook upping their UI/UX game for
notes, it can strike as a good competition, if it catches on. Lets see how it
works out.

------
ChuckMcM
Sometimes I get the feeling there is a business model in there somewhere
trying to get out. Something that replaces magazines. I don't know if medium
is it, certainly Blogger and Tumblr weren't, or the collection of things that
is AOL these days.

Somehow a go-to-market strategy involving authors, editors, advertisers, and
readers which gives everyone a really great experience. It is a tough nut to
crack though.

------
lemiant
What are they gonna do with all that money?

...change the company name to Large?

~~~
dublinben
Start paying their writers?

~~~
GCA10
Doesn't the arrow of progress actually point the other way? If the site gets
big enough, they can charge writers for the privilege of being published
there.

~~~
tedunangst
LiveJournal all over.

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lbotos
Anyone have any ideas how long this will keep them going without having the
start really monetizing? IMO, I think it's _insane_ that in 2015 companies can
be given so much cash with a hope that they can become profitable.

~~~
GrinningFool
The hope is probably that they can be bought up for profit, as opposed to
being a profitable company in the long term. That's what comprises a business
model in startup land.

And let's be honest - it works enough of the time that people keep doing it.

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PretzelFisch
So Medium is Blogger meets Twitter. What is the monetization strategy?

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julianz
With 57 million bucks you think they might be able to make it so all the text
doesn't jump to the side when you click the page? That drives me nuts.

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zxcvvcxz
Can someone explain why blog website needs 82M?

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kinkora
honest question: why does medium need to raise so much money?

Given that ev is behind it, I would imagine he has the financial resources to
fund it himself AND more importantly, he has the connections within the
silicon valley Illuminati (i.e. VCs, Tech Journalist, CEOs of various tech
companies).

------
ogezi
This is probably one of the best news sites out there.

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dharma1
pretty good for good looking contenteditable

------
pnathan
I'd rather use Dreamwidth.

