

Why I’d rather write in Medium than my personal blog - stephenhacking
https://medium.com/writers-on-writing/dd277b535c03

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jacquesm
Why would you post here on HN that you'd rather write on medium when you
hardly participate here to begin with?

If it were a post with some actual content I can see why you'd want to post it
here for discussion but it is a meta post about the medium you write on, not
an actual post. Not exactly hacker news. Personally I think medium is the new
geocities, it'll implode one day and leave another big hole in the web unless
archive.org or archiveteam get there first.

Beware of who you give control of your content.

~~~
stephenhacking
You're right. I was more active on Inbound.org vs Hacker News simply because I
used to primarily write marketing content. The post I wrote yesterday which
was actually a rant about the growth hacking buzzword hit the first page of HN
momentarily. That obviously caused a server crash which made me want to switch
ship to Medium / Quora.

Medium's editor was just a lot nicer.

~~~
stephenhacking
And, I was talking about Medium vs my personal blog. Not really talking about
Medium vs HN.

------
HeyImAlex
Eh, use a static site generator in tandem with something like s3+cloudfront
and you can have a lightning fast and practically infinitely scalable personal
site for pennies a month.

My site's not particularly complex, but it comes out ahead speed wise on
pingdom when compared to medium.

[http://i.imgur.com/O2xVK7t.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/O2xVK7t.jpg)

~~~
ameen
I'd say blogging on a "platform" as opposed to a self-hosted/controlled
solution would have some benefits over a self-baked one.

But at the end of the day, if you're blogging for your business/startup it
makes more sense for it to be under your control as you can leverage the
analytics and if possible turn them into conversions.

------
minimaxir
I had the same _Error establishing a database connection_ incident. So I moved
to Github Pages.

There are _many, many_ places for long-form content that won't crash under
load. Posterous's replacement, Tumblr, Wordpress.com, etc. "Not crashing" is a
bizarre and _bad_ reason to choose _exclusively_ Medium.

~~~
stephenhacking
Medium has a prettier editor? I could get featured on the first page of medium
if my content doesn't suck?

~~~
minimaxir
Game Theory. If everyone joins Medium to "get on the front page," then the
probability of getting on the front page becomes that much lower.

Also, getting on the front page of Medium is mostly irrelevant since you have
mostly nil personal branding anyways. If you're going to hit #1 on Hacker
News, do it on a website you own with your own content.

~~~
mapleoin
_then the odds of getting on the front page become that much higher._

you mean lower

~~~
stephenhacking
Yes sir. My bad.

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bslatkin
This is going to give me an aneurysm. For the love of freedom, people, please
own your content online – host it on your own domain.

~~~
stephenhacking
I used to think the same way. But, propagation of your content is a lot more
important than just feeling good that it's hosted on your own blog.

~~~
marcuspovey
Even if you no longer own or control the content?

~~~
grinich
What use is owning it if nobody reads it?

~~~
minimaxir
You'd be surprised at how much traffic you can get if your blog is properly
indexed on Google.

------
dingaling
I understand the point being made ( _running a personal server can be
frustrating / time-consuming /annoying_ ) but the principle of the Web is peer
to peer hyperlinking.

Consolidating onto 'easy' vended services may work short-term, but will
accelerate the transformation of the Web into 'channels' owned by media
conglomerates. Opera Unite was a valiant effort to fight the transformation
for 'normal folk' to use but sadly withered.

No-one much visits my blog so I don't have a problem with load, but several
co-geeks have moved theirs into AWS to handle peaks. I still feel that's sort-
of cheating but at least they retain control and technical nous.

------
eYsYs
Quora anyone? As a writer, I feel its neat, accessible and of course reliable.
People are more likely to follow your profile on Quora than signup with their
emails on your personal blog. And don't forget the easy-to-earn upvotes and
shares. Down side: No analytics :(

As a reader, Quora gives me more insight about the author through answers on
diverse topics.

Disclaimer: Quora fan here! Answer may be biased.

~~~
minimaxir
Quora's content ownership and presence of personal branding is _worse_ than
Medium, which is quite an accomplishment.

~~~
omd
Only because Medium hasn't accumulate‎d enough free content yet to disclose
how they are planning on appropriating and monetizing it.

Don't forget Medium is brought to us from the makers of Twitter, with such
classics as "Here's an API; get the fuck off of my API."

------
scrrr
So now medium is the cool blogging platform. Last year it was svbtle. Who's
next, who has even prettier stylesheets?

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telephonetemp
Note that the content you put on Medium is not viewable in Opera Mini on
Android, Symbian and J2ME dumbphones.

~~~
stephenhacking
Yet another yay for medium.

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webjunkie
So and do you drive a rental car because, you know, you don't do any
maintenance on your own?

~~~
stephenhacking
Great argument. But, not quite the same. I run my personal blog on a $5/mo
digital ocean box - I'm too cheap to shell out $100/mo for a managed SingleHop
box.

I don't know how to use terminal too much, I just learnt how to reset mysql
AFTER my server crashed yesterday.

