Ask HN: Do you read Medium.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you read Medium.com

5 pointsbdehaaff15 comments

I am attracted to the visual nature of the site and the ease at posting content -- which I do often for Aha.io But the reality is that posts that drive 15K views elsewhere drive 50 there. Do you read Medium.com? If not, why?

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If a link leads to Medium, I tend to avoid the article. Just like Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Forbes, etc.

Can you tell me more about why you avoid it? What is it about Medium that turns you off?

For me, it's because Medium is frequently poorly researched and/or written blogspam. The URL provides no context about who or what wrote it.

Ok, so you perceive it to be more spammy with lower quality content than HN or other sites. What other sites are at the top of your pyramid? Also, are you a dev?

Every time I see a medium url on HN I shudder and skip past content that just feels manufactured and forced on us.

It's interesting that you think they are manufactured. I find the non technical content on par with what is posted to HN. Can you share more about why you have this opinion?

Part of it is volume. HNSearch suggests medium got 425 submissions in the last 4 weeks. That's a higher submission volume than TechCrunch (327), ArsTechnica (193) or the BBC (195) or even The Guardian who broke most Snowden/NSA news (181).

Belying this volume is an almost complete lack of quality. The most popular 10 articles in the last 4 weeks from medium and the above sites:

medium:

    150  136  107   47   32   28   17   16   14   13

TC:

    462  183  175  146  141  120  113   99   80   74

Ars:

    524  316  271  212  183  170  149  122  121  109

BBC:

    915  167  166  123  110   93   81   75   59   58

Guardian:

    388  328  293  185  184  183  182  156  162  149

The best of medium is just not very good anymore and it's a sharp and sudden fall into very forgettable content which makes you wonder why it's even submitted let alone so much.

Almost daily. It's like shopping at Marshall's (might just be an East Coast store) - there are some really killer finds amongst the muck, you just need to be aware enough to recognize them. (Particularly since it opened to everyone recently.)

Ok, so you actually are a reader. I think your point is true for all news sites. And just fyi, Marshalls is also on the West Coast.

Big time reader (and contributor). Fell in love with it from the first day, couldn't wait to be invited. It's certainly gone downhill a bit since it opened up to everyone (spotted spam a few times), but still some great writers that choose it as a distribution platform. And thanks on Marshalls, lol.

If a link points to medium.com (such as from HN or twitter or somewhere else) and I intend to read the article, yes, I read it. But I don't goto medium to browse news.

I wonder if that is a common theme. I am curious to hear what others say. It might also just be the nature of "news" sites.

Personally, the reason I don't go directly to medium for news is I think their content is all over the place. Some articles are about life lessons, some are about programming, some about startups, etc... If I'm reading the news, I tend to look for a given theme at any given time. If I'm working, I'm looking to read about programming stuff. If I'm watching TV and I have a laptop in front of me, I may want to read about current events Going to HN or gizmodo or ... usually presents me with a specific topic. Medium (IMO) does not.

Interesting. I just noticed today, while posting an article, that they now have additional categories which further splinter the news. It allows for more specific tagging of content but makes it harder for posters and readers to hone in on what they are interested in.

No. It seems they allow anyone to write on medium and most of the authors seem to be pretty bad at providing quality content.

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