Paywalls coming to medium.com: “We're building monetisation” | Hacker News Reader

Paywalls coming to medium.com: “We're building monetisation”

bbc.co.uk

37 pointspmlnr69 comments

The HN title is sensationalist considering the length of the article and other points of discussion. The full quote is:

"I also think there's a lot of potential for premium or subscription or even user-paid content. Some sort of paywall or membership."

It's unfair IMO.

In context:

"We're building monetisation into the product right now," says Williams, predicting a roll-out of the features within a month or so.

"We're not limiting ourselves to advertising," he says, stressing that Medium won't become a mess of banner ads but instead "sponsored" content.

"I also think there's a lot of potential for premium or subscription or even user-paid content. Some sort of paywall or membership."

Sounds like sponsored content is the works right now, and paywalls are being considered.

> title is sensationalist

Yep, on purpose. The original title is misleading as well, presenting medium from a false view.

> Yep, on purpose

That's an abuse of HN. We take submission privileges away from accounts that do this, so please don't do it again.

The site guidelines ask you to change the original title when it is misleading or linkbait, but not by turning it into a sensational opinion piece. Cherry-picking a single detail at the expense of all the others is editorializing. Moreover your title went way beyond what that detail in the article justifies. All of this is what the HN guidelines try to prevent.

I'm not sure I agree that the original title was misleading, but even if it was, the replacement must be accurate and neutral, preferably using representative language from the article. If you have a tendentious point to make, you need to make it via a comment in the thread, on a level playing field with every other user.

Plus, they discussed a whole lot of other things which were rather interesting.

Completely unfair, so much so that I don't think restoring the original title and unflagging this thread is a good idea. Perhaps someone else can repost the article and start an un-skewed discussion about it.

Honestly, I think the submission title doesn't do the article much justice. While it does mention their intention to monetize, it talks about other tings to.

I mean, maybe I don't use it much, but it seems to do a really good job of filtering spam and I don't see much harassment. But it's hard to see opposing views unless you look hard enough for posts which are usually shut down by others. Also, the comments have to be approved by the author which does lead to echo chambers, but they seem to know this since their lawyer Ferrest said that "You shouldn't necessarily be kept safe from other people challenging your ideas."

It's also very SF-centric at times, especially with all the self-help posts, but it does do a good job at content discovery since I can get a wide range of topic from the tech industry through to social issues.

I don't know how they'll sell paywalls to users, though. I mean, the internet has a lot of blogs which are already free to see. Plus, I can use my Pocket recommended feature for diversity right?

Yes, the title was an abuse of HN and irredeemably skewed the thread. Someone else is welcome to repost the article.

While not true in this particular case, sometimes the title of an article on a linked page changes, making it appear as if the title submitted to HN was editorialized. This happened recently with a link I submitted that used the verbatim title, and I was called out for it when the site's owner changed the title later.

That's true, and I'm sorry that got it wrong in your case. The NYT is particularly fickle with its titles, but usually there's some trace on the page that lets us know that the submitted title was an earlier version.

My case it was CNN, not the New York Times, but I guess the lesson is to avoid sites that do this often if you want to be taken reliably here.

Nah, it's an edge case that doesn't happen often. Just submit the best stories. Nothing else matters by comparison.

I fail to understand what medium adds to any other blogging platform. Especially us technical users have dozens of self-hosted alternatives (in addition to the weird beast that is GitHub pages) that have existed since, like, forever.

Why lock yourself in a proprietary platform that then, invariably (like we are seeing now), is going to have to monetize your content?

Why aren't more people bothered by the fact that more and more previously decentralized/self-hosted models are being transformed to monopolies?

> We are going to take things down that are unsafe, that are hate speech, that are harassment. It's not a legal obligation, it's an obligation to the ecosystem of the site.

Censorship, it seems.

These comments kill me.

You may have the right to say whatever you want, but not on a blog I'm hosting for you.

While that makes sense, when these companies aspire to be the dominant platform, an oligarchy, or even a monopoly if they could, their power over public discourse is concerning.

Independent blogs and forums, and even independent media, are declining. The future is trending toward hosted content, with only a few hosts.

So, no mods anywhere? You could make the same argument that deleting spam is censorship.

We accept certain limits on free speech, even when the First Amendment applies.

Encouraging a few powerful companies to censor anything they like, without restriction, because their platforms are private property is different from accepting reasonable censorship.

So go start your own! Medium is only 3.5 years old and are just now talking about revenue. Sounds like there is plenty of room for competition.

Free speech doesn't mean anyone has a responsibility to build and offer what you want the way you want it just because you want it.

Censorship is a real thing, like when the president of Turkey prosecutes people for insulting him. There are phrases that literally may not be said in that country.

Medium isn't telling you your speech isn't legal, but they have no obligation to lend you a megaphone.

> So go start your own!

Unfortunately most of us aren't billionaires.

"The press is free, for anyone that owns one."

I didn't mean to say Medium is wrong to censor. I'm saying it's sad the world at large seems to prefer a writing channel that's censored.

host your own content if you want to be a prick.

Oh the irony !!

> Why lock yourself in a proprietary platform that then, invariably (like we are seeing now), is going to have to monetize your content?

Same reason why people use Gmail instead of their self hosted email - convenience. It's even more surprising to see hackers using that kind of service (at least for Medium, Gmail is at at least a superior product in some ways) - while perfectly good self hosted, easy to deploy alternatives exist for years.

How is medium more convenient that, for example, WordPress.com?

Hosting your mail can be nasty, using something for blogging that's not a complete lock-in is a bit far from that.

Medium lets you login with facebook, paste in a word doc, and you've published in <10 minutes. Its extremely simple. Wordpress, while simple compared to many other cms options, is not simple compared to medium.

One answer: eyeballs. Medium has managed to bring audiences and audiences bring good writing and money (both to Medium and the writers).

The thing with big sustainable audiences is that there has to be some level of centralization, either of hosted content (medium), or linked content (google).

You don't need a hosted service like medium, but you do need some way to bring the right content to the right people. To be honest, even with great insightful writing, I doubt a single blog can tackle this task. In fact, I think the biggest blogs are big not for the content, but for the marketing/leads generation/traffic building skills of the owners.

Exactly, discoverability is everything. It's why Facebook video is about to eat YouTube's lunch.

The same reason furniture stores and car dealers locate near each other: traffic.

Think of writers with magazines and newspapers. The writers themselves are what make the outlet (plus competent management). If an outlet folds, a great writer moves to another outlet, or takes a break, or writes a book.

You're not tied to any outlet. But it can be an advantage to be associated with one. For awhile.

I like the idea that ad-driven business are not sustainable. Ads are manipulative almost by definition and the world would probably be better without them (even though it's hard to make an argument for disallowing people to present their products in the best way possible).

The problem with monetization I see is that internet usage is so far-spread. The amount of articles I read per week/month might be fairly constant but it's spread among dozens of sites. I don't want to pay for every single read (as that would make me think twice about reading stuff) so the only option is a subscription but then I'd pay $5 or $10 a month for a single site that, last month, I might have only read 3 articles on.

IMO the only solution would be cross-site subscriptions, i.e. you pay for "online reading abo" and get access to like 50 sites. I'd also wish that they then get payed based on how much I read on each site. I'd actually pay for a service like that.

This is what https://flattr.com was supposed to sort out, isn't it?

Yep, but nobody has managed to lower the friction with microtransactions enough to get the masses on board. If someone gets that right it could be a new paradigm for web publishing, but that's a big if.

Yep, but it's not exactly widely adopted. I think they have to have an arrangement with each site first don't they? I can onl remember seeing it on small blogs, not a publisher.

Google's contributor might have had a better chance, but like a lot of G services it's completely unpromoted, and hard to find by search unless you know the name already.

It would be interesting to see something like this built into the browser and then automated. Perhaps sites could send a header detailing where to send the micro-transaction. You could load up your browser with $X/month and then have the browser divide the money evenly between all the sites who it crossed passing that header. Now you don't have to think about it, and if it's built into say wordpress the content creator only needs to remember to punch their number into the system.

I pay The Old Reader a $3.00 subscription for RSS each month. I find it a good fit. I would love to see an inverted RSS where I send a micro-transaction to everyone on my feed whose published in the month. Again, like RSS, it would be nice to just have the system be automated. No having to remember to look someone up on Patreon or Flattr and then manage how much I'm giving them.

Medium is banking on the other alternative: most sites die off and a natural monopoly emerges because no one wants to pay for access to more than say three sites. They want to be the facebook of long form comment.

OK but they have nothing going for them. The next time I see a paywall, I'll just avoid it and look for content elsewhere.

I can't see that working, because Medium isn't competing with giant content sites - it's competing with small individual blogs. And those aren't going to die out.

Medium's problem is that most of the content isn't truly valuable. It's beautifully presented and often interesting, but there's very little that would make me want to pay money for it.

I might pay money to a small selection of the best authors, and it wouldn't be so bad if the sites they publish on take a cut.

The only site I'd seriously consider paying regular money to is Quora, because the content is entertaining and often valuable to me.

The other big sites don't make the cut. Maybe TechCrunch, at a push? Certainly not Wired, which has always been mostly noise.

The problem is that most tech blogs offer distraction, not value, and Generation Buzzfeed won't pay for distraction. Paywalls are unlikely to work until the industry understands the distinction.

Like the current cable package except it's more a la carte type

Nice to compare the comments here with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11222499 ("Show HN: Let's encourage ad blocking").

People don't want to pay for content, but they also don't want to see ads...

Most people who are reading Medium or are on the internet are broke or in massive debt (cough Millennials).

They can barely afford rent and food.

If you want to monetize you need to either make medium for baby-boomers or change your govt.

People prioritise different things, I see homeless people with smartphones. We live in an information age, and people value information.

Do you think homeless people are homeless with smartphone because they value a smartphone MORE then housing ?

Or is it because the cost of a smartphone is 1/100 of a month's rent in a shitty apartment.

Or to put it in another way - they can afford a smartphone but cannot afford housing.

Smartphones are incredibly cheap these days compared to the price of content. They've gone on sale for as little as $10, and you can easily pay that for just one month's subscription to one website.

What people seem to not value are the channels that produce information. Information has become ubiquitous, ephemeral and most often freely available through any other arbitrary channel. For pay walls to work, it's an all-or-nothing system.

Not really.

Information is more valuable then ever.

I would rather pay 10 dollars for Netflix then torrent.

But guess why I do not pay 10 dollars for Netflix ?

Because Netflix is shit for me. Since I do not live in the US.

The hassle of going to a torrent site and deal with porn ads is cheaper and better then streaming from Netflix.

Since 10 dollar is 45 minutes of working as a programmer - I spend less then 10 minutes a month having to deal with porn ads. Its basic economics. Unless it takes me 45 minutes of porn ad watching I am not going to switch to Netflix - as simple as that.

And guess why I get paid 10 dollars ?

Due to the broken immigration Laws which gives employers an upper hand as I get deported as soon as I lose my job.

Some of the basic needs of life - housing,food - costs me 1/4 of my salary.

And I am at the upper end of the scale - most of my peers are working in coffee shops in shitty service jobs.

Unless this basic calculus change - good luck monetizing selling articles on the web.

-- from a frustrated millennial --

That is a classic example people repeat a lot. But think about it, if you had literally no money, no skills, no job, and a mental illness, how would you spend $100? A phone that provides you internet access and unlimited information and resources, or $100 for 2 nights in a hotel?

Which makes it tough for publishers, but ultimately it's their responsibility to create a product that people do want to pay for. (The existence of reddits like /r/shutupandtakemymoney shows that this happens all the time.) The beauty of the internet is that there are so many sources for so many things, I can almost always go someplace free for whatever it is I seek.

I think that it is lose lose situation with the paid content, at least with current state of online payments.

With paid content you lose your privacy and you lose your anonymity and you become more easily targetable and more attractive to the ads.

If we take the paper magazines then there are the ads, and you pay for it. I believe the same will happen with the online publishing.

Well sometimes it's a matter of thresholds. Someone upthread was talking about millenials – as a matter of fact we balk at spending any money on online content.

This added to the fact that Medium is basically a glorified blogging platform makes me not want to pay for it. Seriously, if you were to ask me or anyone else back in 2006 what would be the hot new area for monetizing in 10 years, I doubt anyone would have said "blogging with paywalls".

I'll pay for content, but the value has to be there. And in this age of click bait headlines, non researched articles of no susbstance or value, I'm not about to pay for someone's low value opinions. Sure they have value, but it's like $0.02 of value. And it's not scarce. When everyone can create content and publish, and many are willing to do it for free to create their own brand, it creates a market where ideas and words are not monetizable. I don't even mind ads, when done right. A trailer for a movie I want to see is an ad, and I'll seek it out when I want the content. But ad agencies have done this to themselves by becoming a virus on content pages.

Besides, why should I have to pay? I create and consume something far more valuable in the form of OSS. No ads, no price.

To say monetization has to be ads or paywalls is excluding hundreds of other ways to monetize content. It's lazy, and won't succeed in the information era.

My thoughts exactly. So, how is Medium supposed to survive?

I'm not preaching. I'm at least partially in the same boat. I think ads have gotten nearly abusive and I am not sure how much content I'm actually willing to pay for.

The problem for guys like Medium is that there is still an abundance of free content that can be ad blocked, so people will just move elsewhere. So, it seems that lower quality content providers will simply go out of business and the higher quality will shift to paid (provided they can stay in business long enough). Once there are fewer quality choices and most require pay, people will be more willing to pay.

In the meantime, it's a tough business to be in.

If this is set up as something like "5 free articles a month, then $0.1 to read the article, and 70% goes to the author" then I can see it working very well. Medium has proven that it's capable of attracting some talented writers and making the content discoverable - of all the content sites out there Medium feels like the only one I'd really consider subscribing to.

Yes, but getting people - enough people - to pay for content is the challenge here, not having perceived quality content / discoverability.

its sad. i like medium. but i do not pay for articles anymore. somebody's opinion is not worth money. 'free speech' should also mean 'free to access' in the internet age.

I've never understood what's special about medium.com. It seems like any other blog, Wordpress, Blogger, etc. Plain text articles with some images. Or is there something more to it?

Content. You didn't mention the content. Maybe it's the content.

I really wish people would look into patron funding (eg: Patreon) instead of paywalls.

Title: Inside Medium: an attempt to bring civility to the internet

And did you find that title true after reading the article?

Yes.

People here are complaining about potential censorship and paywalls. Perhaps we can have the best of both worlds and decentralize it, compensate authors and still provide it free.

Implement it as an Ethereum like dapp/smart contract with the same function as Patreon for long-form articles. Make the Dapp usable and accessible through the browser like Instapaper.

Liberate the content, make it 'free' after stretch goals have been reached. Use community curation through voting contracts similar to the slashdot/hl karma points.

Also integrate distributed search, automated tagging and perhaps integrated commenting and Sia or IPFS for distributed storage. And automatically create an epub versions of the top 12 longforms of the week so people can read their longform articles offline on e-paper/paper.

It was nice knowing you medium.

A paywall for user-generated content? Let's see how well that works. Doesn't quora do the same thing? How does it work for them?

Does quora have a paywall? I've never bothered to go past the login wall. (I just Google what I want to read.)

Not paywall, but IMNSHO dancing on the line of shady practices - "you're a spider? Carry on. You're a human? No text for you, register!"

Quora has no paywall (or other revenue stream from what I can tell) but they did make some changes to require logins to access content. Not sure if that is still in-place.

Goodbye Medium. Aaaaand, hello archive.is copy of Medium!

How can someone with previous startup experience can be so shortsighted! Ahhh, now I remember Twitter API restrictions and witch hunting of third party apps and this is coming from the same business culture.

about time.

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