A Medium Dilemma

Reply to: "A Medium Dilemma" by Ben Werdmüller

I wrote something similar about Medium back in July to what Ben Werdmüller writes now. Medium isn’t doing something bad, it’s just that they changed directions over the last years. From being a platform, where anyone can write anything and anyone can read anything for free, it’s now something like a paid magazine anyone can contribute too (and earn some money from it).

What Medium isn’t is a generic blogging or publishing platform. It’s narrowed its focus into being more like a magazine that everyone can contribute to (and I’m told that more changes are coming in the New Year). In doing so, it inevitably loses some of its early users - and it adds features like a paywall that may drive some casual readers away.

And that’s actually a good thing:

But in building a magazine that anyone can contribute to, Medium has opened the door to a more diverse community of writers sharing their lived experiences and getting paid for it as part of a business model that promotes value over blind engagement and doesn’t need to profile you all over the web.

People, who used Medium as the generic blogging platform, now experience why provider lock-in should be avoided. If you want to blog (and don’t want to generate some income from it), start a blog with your own domain and the possibility to move platforms. I learned my things: There’s a Medium archive on my blog with articles I originally published on Medium.

I’m currently still in a year-subscription for the Membership until March 2020, but I’m not sure I want to extend the Membership after that. It’s just that I find those stories on Medium not interesting enough to spend 5€ per month or 50€ per year on it.

What I really wish Medium to fix though, are those banners (Membership ads and cookies). Please make them a bit less annoying.

https://werd.io/2019/a-medium-dilemma

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