It killed me not to be able to highlight from the hot yoga down to the anorexic models on meth. 🤣
I’m perfectly fine with Medium’s implosion at this point. Some days I’d rather go bobbing for apples in a bowl of hypodermic needles than open the app.
It's interesting that I'm not finding many "new" writers of interest on Medium. It may be as simple as coach Tony just not being very good at his job. Sometimes, you gotta lop off the head of the beast.
He's certainly a gods-awful communicator. His habit of contradicting official statements by his employees, not in his own official statement but by commenting on random writers' articles, is ridiculous.
And he wonders why people get completely confused and don't trust what Medium says! There's no coherent messaging, nowhere to look for an honest account of what's actually going on!
I actually never really thought much about his communication skills being a part of the problem, but yeah! That’s probably a really big, big part of it. Thanks for bringing that up because now that you mention it, I realize I have seen examples of his comments on posts where I had trouble understanding what he was saying. Seems like an important skill for a CEO.
I had been a paying member of Medium since the Ev days, before the creation of the Medium Partner Program. I, too, never wrote for money, and rarely earned even $1.00 per month. Until I wrote a story about being a hard NO on their ‘premier’ level of membership, that cost three times the monthly rate, and came with vague promises of ‘more money’ for all, I rarely even looked at my income stats.
That is when I noticed the changes beginning. They happened too many, too fast. Nobody had any idea what to make of them, what they meant, or even how to judge them against any revenue changes, up or down.
Then came the personnel changes.
The layoffs began in earnest about a year ago. I noticed that one of my favourite Medium execs was no longer writing; it wasn’t long that the first story about layoffs of high-level folks began to appear.
It was also about the time focus on AI and how it was affecting writing in general, began to appear. Whether there is a connection or not is for smarter, more dedicated Mediumites to determine.
I left in January, when my annual subscription was to renew. I will not return.
I didn't mention AI partly because, even though the original version of this story wasn't all that long ago, AI was only beginning to become invasive on Medium. AI is obviously having an impact there. Their reaction has been to change their earnings algorithm yet again. I didn't see the point in updating the story to include AI. Too much additional research given that I think Medium is likely either on its last legs, or will get purchased outright, which will mean yet more algorithm changes.
It killed me not to be able to highlight from the hot yoga down to the anorexic models on meth. 🤣
I’m perfectly fine with Medium’s implosion at this point. Some days I’d rather go bobbing for apples in a bowl of hypodermic needles than open the app.
Lol, thanks.
It's interesting that I'm not finding many "new" writers of interest on Medium. It may be as simple as coach Tony just not being very good at his job. Sometimes, you gotta lop off the head of the beast.
He's certainly a gods-awful communicator. His habit of contradicting official statements by his employees, not in his own official statement but by commenting on random writers' articles, is ridiculous.
And he wonders why people get completely confused and don't trust what Medium says! There's no coherent messaging, nowhere to look for an honest account of what's actually going on!
It's frustrating in the extreme.
I actually never really thought much about his communication skills being a part of the problem, but yeah! That’s probably a really big, big part of it. Thanks for bringing that up because now that you mention it, I realize I have seen examples of his comments on posts where I had trouble understanding what he was saying. Seems like an important skill for a CEO.
I had been a paying member of Medium since the Ev days, before the creation of the Medium Partner Program. I, too, never wrote for money, and rarely earned even $1.00 per month. Until I wrote a story about being a hard NO on their ‘premier’ level of membership, that cost three times the monthly rate, and came with vague promises of ‘more money’ for all, I rarely even looked at my income stats.
That is when I noticed the changes beginning. They happened too many, too fast. Nobody had any idea what to make of them, what they meant, or even how to judge them against any revenue changes, up or down.
Then came the personnel changes.
The layoffs began in earnest about a year ago. I noticed that one of my favourite Medium execs was no longer writing; it wasn’t long that the first story about layoffs of high-level folks began to appear.
It was also about the time focus on AI and how it was affecting writing in general, began to appear. Whether there is a connection or not is for smarter, more dedicated Mediumites to determine.
I left in January, when my annual subscription was to renew. I will not return.
I didn't mention AI partly because, even though the original version of this story wasn't all that long ago, AI was only beginning to become invasive on Medium. AI is obviously having an impact there. Their reaction has been to change their earnings algorithm yet again. I didn't see the point in updating the story to include AI. Too much additional research given that I think Medium is likely either on its last legs, or will get purchased outright, which will mean yet more algorithm changes.
Thanks for the comment!