Ask HN: If not Medium, then what?
34 comments
TikTok is probably the king of medias right now. The main problem is that you have to likely put your face out to the public. I have worked on creative ways in not doing so (despite not being full-on ugly mind you), but in the age of scammers and fake news, facial credibility for content is often an essential key to longevity, and may become pretty much a basic requirement moving forward for the more credibility-minded social platforms.
I think the main issue now that is really flooding out creative writing as well as other types of creator communities (I make music for film @ruffandtuffrecordings - a new account mind you) is that everyone is grinding individually than creating partnerships. While everyone is quitting their jobs to become a creator, they are finding they have to do every aspect a corporations would normally hire for and then quickly burning out after a deep investment in time and gear.
It's probably better to partner with people who share your subject matter interest and to form a team of people and then start a dedicated web site that you use social media as a pointer thereto... That way your content also is not under risk of immediate loss in most cases if you pay your bills on time.
That being said, where to go also probably depends most on your intended subject matter.
I think the main issue now that is really flooding out creative writing as well as other types of creator communities (I make music for film @ruffandtuffrecordings - a new account mind you) is that everyone is grinding individually than creating partnerships. While everyone is quitting their jobs to become a creator, they are finding they have to do every aspect a corporations would normally hire for and then quickly burning out after a deep investment in time and gear.
It's probably better to partner with people who share your subject matter interest and to form a team of people and then start a dedicated web site that you use social media as a pointer thereto... That way your content also is not under risk of immediate loss in most cases if you pay your bills on time.
That being said, where to go also probably depends most on your intended subject matter.
To your first paragraph I can only say: fuck that.
If that's the future, I can expect a split between the tech savvy using niche text interfaces that have served us well for decades, and the polished ultra-capitalistic corporate vast majority of the internet using video to create viral sub-minute """content""".
I hope you are wrong with the idea that TikTok clones will become the future "credibility minded social platforms" because it sounds dystopian form of idiocracy. Not everything can be reduced to quick-acting 30 seconds short videos.
(Of note: I am very aware of the incredible publicity TikTok is having on this forum, being touted as the future of the internet that we should just embrace.)
If that's the future, I can expect a split between the tech savvy using niche text interfaces that have served us well for decades, and the polished ultra-capitalistic corporate vast majority of the internet using video to create viral sub-minute """content""".
I hope you are wrong with the idea that TikTok clones will become the future "credibility minded social platforms" because it sounds dystopian form of idiocracy. Not everything can be reduced to quick-acting 30 seconds short videos.
(Of note: I am very aware of the incredible publicity TikTok is having on this forum, being touted as the future of the internet that we should just embrace.)
I think this is a similar dialogue to when twitter was up and coming. TikTok has also already raised their length limit a la twitter. Once VR/AR becomes popular we will probably have a corresponding short form viral media platform. And so forth and so on.
We were already on the internet blogging and chatting on IRC when Twitter appeared. Posting "Enjoying a coffee on the beach right now" on that new platform wasn't much of a revolution.
Using short video for content instead of text is a massive paradigm shift [1], let alone VR/AR so popular for people to routinely consume content that way. The information density of text is unparalleled, the best video platforms can hope is for video to work alongside text, not to replace it altogether. Same story for VR, and this one doesn't have the technology yet. It is too bulky, too slow, too cumbersome. One day, but IMO it's a decade away still before it's ubiquitous and replaces scrolling your twitter feed on the toilet.
1: "What about YouTube?" — YT replaces TV, it's not replacing text or blogging. The point of my comment is disagreeing with the idea that facial credibility will be the future of media. I don't know where I'm going exactly with my rambling, but I feel I would loathe a future where the "news" is delivered in 30 seconds viral-made video snippets.
Using short video for content instead of text is a massive paradigm shift [1], let alone VR/AR so popular for people to routinely consume content that way. The information density of text is unparalleled, the best video platforms can hope is for video to work alongside text, not to replace it altogether. Same story for VR, and this one doesn't have the technology yet. It is too bulky, too slow, too cumbersome. One day, but IMO it's a decade away still before it's ubiquitous and replaces scrolling your twitter feed on the toilet.
1: "What about YouTube?" — YT replaces TV, it's not replacing text or blogging. The point of my comment is disagreeing with the idea that facial credibility will be the future of media. I don't know where I'm going exactly with my rambling, but I feel I would loathe a future where the "news" is delivered in 30 seconds viral-made video snippets.
It wouldn't be so bad if the content wasn't an army of attention and money-seeking influencers. Those influencers will burn out once the truth about the creator funds finally wears them out.
Tiktok also encourages parroting information, and that leads to corruption of information. They really need to create more niches than the one channel they're runing to thrive.
But imagine a TikTok UI on something like Ted Talks, where you could scroll through a variety of speeches until you land on the one you want... Or even Netflix implementing that for movies, or YouTube for music videos. It would finally create a new way of finding new things quickly. There is great benefits to TikTok's method when done properly. The question is whether or not creators will be properly paid or not...
For news I'd probably rather scroll through well composed story intros to find what I want to hear more about than to watch an entire show these days to be honest. Once I find something I like then I can give it more attention. I used to wait through commercial breaks just to hear vital news, now it's much easier to just go to CNN and get pelted by pop-up ads on mobile... hah.
Tiktok also encourages parroting information, and that leads to corruption of information. They really need to create more niches than the one channel they're runing to thrive.
But imagine a TikTok UI on something like Ted Talks, where you could scroll through a variety of speeches until you land on the one you want... Or even Netflix implementing that for movies, or YouTube for music videos. It would finally create a new way of finding new things quickly. There is great benefits to TikTok's method when done properly. The question is whether or not creators will be properly paid or not...
For news I'd probably rather scroll through well composed story intros to find what I want to hear more about than to watch an entire show these days to be honest. Once I find something I like then I can give it more attention. I used to wait through commercial breaks just to hear vital news, now it's much easier to just go to CNN and get pelted by pop-up ads on mobile... hah.
A static website (let's say a Hugo blog on GitHub pages) can make the magic and host the content in a future-proof way.
For the discoverability: every social network can help to drive visitors to your posts.
It's crazy how today a lot of effort are put on decentralizing finance meanwhile the simplest activities (like blogging) are being strongly centralized.
For the discoverability: every social network can help to drive visitors to your posts.
It's crazy how today a lot of effort are put on decentralizing finance meanwhile the simplest activities (like blogging) are being strongly centralized.
Self host, use services for syndication only. Make that Medium and Facebook post, but just make it a link to your website, maybe with a preview. You get self hosting without needing to bring your own audience, you get Medium etc’s promotion without needing to surrender your content.
I should disclaim that I haven’t personally proven this out, but it’s advice I’ve often seen and what I plan on doing myself.
I should disclaim that I haven’t personally proven this out, but it’s advice I’ve often seen and what I plan on doing myself.
Posting just a link in Medium? I've never seen that, do you have any examples?
Medium even supports mirror your posts with the canonical URL pointing to the original. This means that any discovery on medium should help your SEO. I don't mind being on medium, but I want to have a canonical own that I own and that medium-haters can use.
Personally I have a static site, and when I make a new post it automatically goes out to Mastodon and Medium as well as a couple of "RSS aggregators" (like https://diff.blog/), as well as a dedicated subreddit as my "comments section". Then depending on the content I will often publish to dev.to (which automatically imports from RSS so it is mostly deleting the <style> block that it doesn't understand and hitting publish) and maybe Hacker News or Lobste.rs (although that is basically never, I generally prefer for others to share if they like the post).
But that is my over-complicated setup. At the end of the day I think what matters is own your content. Ideally with a feed on a domain that you control then spread elsewhere as it makes sense.
Personally I have a static site, and when I make a new post it automatically goes out to Mastodon and Medium as well as a couple of "RSS aggregators" (like https://diff.blog/), as well as a dedicated subreddit as my "comments section". Then depending on the content I will often publish to dev.to (which automatically imports from RSS so it is mostly deleting the <style> block that it doesn't understand and hitting publish) and maybe Hacker News or Lobste.rs (although that is basically never, I generally prefer for others to share if they like the post).
But that is my over-complicated setup. At the end of the day I think what matters is own your content. Ideally with a feed on a domain that you control then spread elsewhere as it makes sense.
I’m with you. I just want an easy place to write and share an article, and I would prefer not to self host and install a million things.
No one has seemed to have suggested any alternatives, except for [HackerNoon](https://hackernoon.com). Surely there’s something else? Medium can’t have that large of a stranglehold to the point of a monopoly. (If I’m wrong, then this is a biz opportunity.)
No one has seemed to have suggested any alternatives, except for [HackerNoon](https://hackernoon.com). Surely there’s something else? Medium can’t have that large of a stranglehold to the point of a monopoly. (If I’m wrong, then this is a biz opportunity.)
Self-hosting isn't exactly hard (or expensive) ...if you're posting "elsewhere", you're relying on "them" to decide it's OK for "you" to stay there
If you self-host, you're fully* in charge
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* - where by "fully", I mean you haven't violated the hosting providers ToS, and/or your DNS provider's ToS
If you self-host, you're fully* in charge
-----------
* - where by "fully", I mean you haven't violated the hosting providers ToS, and/or your DNS provider's ToS
I have an "in" on HackerNoon, but not all of my content is tech/startup related (which is what they want). I think the problem is that platforms need a way to monetize, Medium was great during it's growth years but once it needed to start making money, how do they monetize? I'm still hopeful for something else out there
I think the biggest problem with Medium is the fact that nothing was paywalled and then they introduced the paywall, which caused frustration. Substack, on the other hand, is much more pleasurable because there is an expectation from the start that some of the articles are going to be paywalled.
wordpress.com?
If all you TRULY want is a place to share and host an article then that is a problem solved a million times over (including by Medium). My guess is you also want a built-in audience without a paywall.
Anecdotal: I've seen a lot of people migrate to substack (not how much better it is, but I dont dislike visiting it like I dislike visiting a medium blog)
I also hate visiting Medium, but enjoy visiting Substack. They both have paywalls on some of the content, but Substack is much more enjoyable, even when you don't get to see the full article.
https://mirror.xyz is neat. I have seen posts on mirror get on the front page here recently.
Mirror will create an nft of your writing and proxy it to the web2 world.
This means your writing will be owned by your wallet. Mirror cannot take it down and people can support you by buying your writing nft as a collective item.
All this without needing a paywall. The content always remain public.
Mirror will create an nft of your writing and proxy it to the web2 world.
This means your writing will be owned by your wallet. Mirror cannot take it down and people can support you by buying your writing nft as a collective item.
All this without needing a paywall. The content always remain public.
Oh, this is interesting, thanks for the link
Seems like there are two problems you're trying to solve:
1. getting traffic/discoverability
2. a nice platform upon which to blog
I think if you solve the two with separate tools you might get better options. For example for a nice blogging platform, you can try gonevis.com or blogger.com then promote posts on places like reddit/HN/Twitter, etc.
I think if you solve the two with separate tools you might get better options. For example for a nice blogging platform, you can try gonevis.com or blogger.com then promote posts on places like reddit/HN/Twitter, etc.
I bought a year of Medium subscription but I don't think I'll renew it because their suggestion algorithms are bad. If you click on one programming-related article you will be forcefed exclusively the most boring programming crap ever until the end of time. There's like a million articles on there about "programming habits" and "genius daily routines" and "productivity hacks" and "programming career advice" ... all very boring content.
A major issue I see with online blogging is the glut of tech and computing content drowning out everything else. The barrier to entry for self-hosted content also means most self-hosted content is tech oriented.
A major issue I see with online blogging is the glut of tech and computing content drowning out everything else. The barrier to entry for self-hosted content also means most self-hosted content is tech oriented.
FWIW using Medium is actually driving readers away because of how invasive their practices are. They pop things up, interrupt reading and in general they seem to have added so much bloat/tracking to their blog that it loads terribly.
If I must read a Medium article I do so in Firefox's reader mode, but usually the friction/irritation just drives me to click close on the tab and move on to something less offensive.
If I must read a Medium article I do so in Firefox's reader mode, but usually the friction/irritation just drives me to click close on the tab and move on to something less offensive.
Agree I don’t click on medium links, but same for Facebook and tiktok
You don't necessarily have to choose - you can post on your own blog, then copy-paste it to Medium and set the canonical url back to your own address so you keep some of the SEO-juice.
UPDATE
So far the closest free alternatives I've seen are:
- write.as
- mirror.xyz
- typeshare.co
------------
The closest paid alternatives:
- Ghost
- Substack
------------
There are a number of niche-specific ones:
- Hackernoon
- Dev.to
------------
Self-hosted alternatives (non-discoverable):
- Wordpress.org
- Hugo/Digital Ocean (I chose this)
- Next.js
So far the closest free alternatives I've seen are:
- write.as
- mirror.xyz
- typeshare.co
------------
The closest paid alternatives:
- Ghost
- Substack
------------
There are a number of niche-specific ones:
- Hackernoon
- Dev.to
------------
Self-hosted alternatives (non-discoverable):
- Wordpress.org
- Hugo/Digital Ocean (I chose this)
- Next.js
I can't recommend Hackernoon. They are a huge spammer. I've tried to unsubscribe 10 times but still get marketing crap. Somehow some of it still sneaks past my spam filter even though I have marked everything from them in the past as spam.
Hackernoon is a good place to get organic reach, if you're writing stuff that works for their audience.
Dev.to hackernoon hashnode are some other platforms where you can get tech related articles discovered.
But as everyone epse is saying, it is definitely worth the effort to own your own content. Even if you do not self host, set up WordPress or Ghost on their paid hosting and link your own domain.
But as everyone epse is saying, it is definitely worth the effort to own your own content. Even if you do not self host, set up WordPress or Ghost on their paid hosting and link your own domain.
Write.as, it’s as easy to use as medium but federated and open source, so you can self host.
If you feel nostalgic, https://neocities.org/ . It has a discoverability feature, via a social network of common interests.
Ghost - If you are really serious about writing and monetizing it. Not useful if you are not earning from your writing
Medium - If you are gonna write once in a year. or. you are happy putting your articles behind their paywall
dev.to - If you don't have a niche, just writing for the community whenever you feel
hashnode - If you prefer having custom domain, writing for beginners, love SEO, want to build personal brand, and a bit serious about technical writing.
SSG + Github Page - If you love getting your hands dirty in coding & willing to spend sometime to learn a new tech. (plus point, you have full freedom to design it in your own way)
- My self-hosted blog built with NextJs. https://pankajtanwar.in/blogs
dev.to - If you don't have a niche, just writing for the community whenever you feel
hashnode - If you prefer having custom domain, writing for beginners, love SEO, want to build personal brand, and a bit serious about technical writing.
SSG + Github Page - If you love getting your hands dirty in coding & willing to spend sometime to learn a new tech. (plus point, you have full freedom to design it in your own way)
- My self-hosted blog built with NextJs. https://pankajtanwar.in/blogs
Self-host
Share links to your content (can even automate it) to all of the social networks you want it to go to - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook ...
Share links to your content (can even automate it) to all of the social networks you want it to go to - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook ...
If you are writing something, maybe use something like typeshare and twitter.
It happens the same way over and over. Some site will offer discoverability, so writers flock to it, and then the site gradually becomes terrible.
The answer is to own your own stuff. Your own domain, your own blog software, etc. Just develop that. Otherwise you're putting effort into something that isn't you, that's inevitably going to go bad.
The answer is to own your own stuff. Your own domain, your own blog software, etc. Just develop that. Otherwise you're putting effort into something that isn't you, that's inevitably going to go bad.
I used to be an occasional blogger, but had some okay traffic (a few posts took off), but definitely not a name for myself where I could take people with me to my own site. What I liked about Medium was their discoverability, shifting to my blog I believe will lose that discoverability.
Are there other platforms or other ways to get organic readership?