Slashdot Mirror
Medium Cuts Staff By One-Third, Shuts Down New York and DC Offices (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Medium, the San Francisco-based online publishing platform founded in 2012, has laid off 50 employees, or roughly one-third of its staff. The company will also close offices in New York and Washington, DC. Ev Williams, Medium's CEO, wrote in a lengthy post on Wednesday that the company would be changing its business model despite ending 2016 as "our best year yet." He blamed the entire concept of "ad-driven media on the Internet" as the root of the company's shortcomings. As Williams, who is also a co-founder of Twitter, wrote: "It simply doesn't serve people. In fact, it's not designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other "content" we all consume on a daily basis is paid for -- directly or indirectly -- by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we getwell, what we get. And it's getting worse."
So medium is now a small?
God I hope so. So fucking overdue.
You know what else doesn't serve people? Firing fifty of them right after Christmas because you lost interest in your hobby.
Don't worry my sad friend. Donald will get you a job mining coal any day now, and you won't have to spend your pathetic existence trying to bring everyone else down to your level of despair anymore.
150 people to run a blogging platform, no less. I wonder what the org chart looked like. Hopefully most of them were in commissioned ad sales, but fifty seems like it would be big for that kind of business anyway.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I've never even heard of them before? Are they important?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The post's are neither rare nor well done.
Evan Williams blames a "broken system" of financing media through advertising.
I think a more likely problem with Medium is entering the crowded commodity market of blogging platforms with a bad business model and a staff of 150 for something that should take no more than a handful of people.
Of course, he is worth $1.7 billion, so what does he care.
Perhaps you should notify the President-Elect the lack of coal mining jobs in the San Francisco area! He'll bring coal jobs back, even to places that never had them!
Well, there are some bathhouses where you can go exploring shafts if you like.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
1) Never heard of the company
2) Laid of 50 peeps, kinda insignificant
3) Offices closed are 3k miles from me.
Oh, it was some startup trying to feed me ads. So 4) fuck you.
Based on the summary, the CEO seems to be saying that because corporations pay for advertising as a way to drive crappy 'news' to the forefront of the Internet, his site (which it is implied) has non-crappy 'content' that 'advertisers' (read corporations) will not pay for.
Is that a long winded way of telling his ex-employees that his business model /really/ is sound, but the man is keeping them down?
Based on my comments posted over on Medium (but largely applicable to Slashdot, too, so you can substitute in most places):
Pretty sure I looked at Medium a while ago, and if so, today’s visit reminded me why I wasn’t interested. Same sad story, same verse.
There’s a fundamental mismatch here. Many people really do want to know about the problems of the day and even want to help make the world better. Many people want to learn new things so they can make better choices and be more free.
Such goals are irrelevant to the advertisers who are paying for the “free” websites. They would actually prefer docile robots who will quietly obey the ads and buy the toothpaste or politicians. The kind of news they want to pay for is disaster porn like CNN or profitable propaganda like FAUX “news”.
Apparently Medium is not succeeding with what appears to be click-bait approach. Are they desperate enough to consider REAL alternatives? Here are a couple of the top of my head:
(1) Sell SOLUTIONS to the problems. After each article about a problem there should be some links to proposed projects to help SOLVE the problem. Interested readers could look over the projects and buy a share, perhaps $10 a pop, and if enough wannabe-helpful donors agree, then the project would get funded, and later evaluated and the results reported on. The sponsor should be a charitable umbrella organization that would make sure each project proposal was complete and a percentage of funded projects would go back to the websites that helped publicize the problem (like Medium).
(2) Auction my valuable time in LIMITED amounts in exchange for sponsored news. The intermediary (which might be Medium) would have good reason to protect my privacy and personal information in order to protect their involvement, and the companies that are selling goods and services I actually want would get more reliable access to the customers who actually WANT to buy what they’re selling.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I have to agree. Back in 2008 I got laid off with 50 other people from a company roughy the same size (they dropped all the new hires with 2 years or less working there) and no news about that.
Sure I understand covering big companies cutting thousands of people or a big unit being dropped getting some coverage. But a small company with less than 5 years of operating having proplems and reducing in size is depressing and I feel bad for those who got the axe. But it isn't so news worthy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I guess you don't actually work for any business do you?
A 100+ size company may have 1 or 2 HR. Who mainly is working on staffing and tracking vacations and sick days.
Heavy on sales people and nearly equal part product creation and delivery. The CEO for small companies is often split across the department and often the guy who is plunging the toilets
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If I see a % in an article I expect it is an attempt to lie.
Because you can hide a lot of data in these numbers.
I had a failure in a project I was working on which had a 1% error rate (due to org's blind trust in a vendor)
However over 300,000 data element crated a massive problem to be fixed.
99% if the data is fine. But that 1% caused a lot of trouble because of the data size and volume of the application meant 1% error rates caused production problems multiple times a day.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The biggest problem with news reporting is that once news is out there, it's free. If you spend a year doing an in-depth investigation, or even if you just bag an exclusive interview with some interesting person, the moment you publish it every other news outlet repeats the interesting bits and if you are lucky throws in a link to your original post.
Some companies have managed to turn this into a business. Take Reuters and AP, for example. Other news outlets pay them a subscription to access their stories and then reprint them wholesale, or with minimal changes. Maybe Medium could start providing a similar service to other media outlets.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Wait... you think people demanding we let them drive on roads we all share without proof that they are capable of doing so with a modicum of responsibility and skill, or worse with convincing proof that they cannot (known as 'license suspended') are somehow heroes for liberty ?
When your actions endanger the lives of uncountable innocent people - they are NOT an action of liberty. Regulating you from doing so is not government overreach - it's government doing exactly what it exists - above all - to do. On the contrary - not letting you drive with a suspended license is PROTECTING liberty - it protects MY liberty to walk the streets without an unreasonably high risk that the people driving on it will fail to stop at zebra crossings.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I don't think you know what Medium is...this is like suggesting that a paper company is at fault for the failure of a newspaper. Medium is a publishing platform, nothing more. You accuse them of using a "click-bait approach," but there are thousands of sites running on Medium, each with their own approach.
hi
...was an original, meme-before-memes headline, years ago
bu-huu, we can't find advertisers that don't want to censor our content... bu-huu
Medium is headquartered in SF with offices in NYC and DC? Those three cities are probably all in the "top-15 list of the most expensive office space" cities in the U.S. Is it possible the long list of start-up and "interruption" companies aren't really good stewards of their investor's money? Why not buy/lease office space in places like downtown Gary, Indiana or Glasgow, Montana? The overhead would certainly be a lot cheaper and once they figure out their real business model and start making real money, they can move to the glitz and glamour cities.
The vast majority of articles, videos, and other "content" we all consume on a daily basis is paid for -- directly or indirectly -- by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period.
Ev noted, continuing
Apparently we suck at this, and those corporate overloards aren't paying us enough to keep the lights on so we will have to find another way.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
150 people to run a blogging platform, no less. I wonder what the org chart looked like.
Medium should have no more than 20 people, and that would still be considered inefficient for what they are and do, IMHO.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Medical and insurance costs have been rising for decades. Overall, under ACA/Obamacare, they rose more slowly. There are outlier cases on both sides, and of course the ones you hear the most about are from the people who see unusually higher costs. I'm one of the other outliers; but my costs went down considerably and my access to healthcare went up. Same for my SO.
The situation is far from perfect. The ACA either needs tweaks, or we need to transition to a socially responsible form of single payer, which means straight-up tax-based medical care. What we don't need is a return to pre-existing condition death and suffering consequences, and under/non-cared-for poor people.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
*rimshot*
Nonsense. My logs show all kinds of link-clickery on actual links to other sites (as opposed to the spammy crap generated by ad vendors.) My logs also show a majority of people arrive from other sites - not google, etc.
Google, by its very nature, aims at the mediocre. It ranks search results by "popularity", and uses multiple metrics to determine who/what is most popular. Popular means median/average. That's because they have no way to actually determine when content is most relevant, because that requires subject-matter expertise — so far, at least, that requires human skills. Not that Google can't find worthy content; it absolutely can, but you certainly can't count on it being at the top of the results unless your Google-fu is master level and you know exactly what you're looking for.
Subject-matter expertise is the precise thing that drives outlinking on a decently curated website. In my areas of expertise, when I pop a link into my serious content, I'm doing so because the linked site actually contains further expertise. Not because the thing is "popular."
That's why hand-linking, and related surfing, is capable of a much higher quality web experience. Granted some number of people don't do this and don't have the attention span to actually read anything more than a text bite, preferring to be spoon-fed with video and twitterized, pre-digested pap. But quality web sites were never about appealing to those who don't read for content. There are more high-quality sites out there than one could have any hope of consuming, even in areas of knowledge that are fairly esoteric. I know this because that's where I spend most of my web-surfing time, reading significant content written by people who know what they're talking about in areas of interest of mine that are not mainstream. In the high-value portion of the mainstream, such as politics, news, and social analysis, there are even more high-quality sites. Just because many get their content from Drudge, Huffington, or (vomit) Facebook, doesn't mean that quality content in those areas doesn't exist. It just means some people never see it.
As long as the costs to get online remain as low as they are, I don't see any of this changing, either. Costs me a trivial amount to keep my websites up and running, and to put a lot of quality information and capability out for people who share my interests.
Those with their nose buried in text- video- and sound-bite class "apps" and exclusively chasing Google searches will often think that's the entire online world, as the parent post has asserted, but that isn't the case now, it never was, and it seems entirely unlikely that it will ever be so.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's only a problem because we allow news gathering and dissemination to be a for-profit enterprise; everything that derives from that will be (and is) tainted by valuing money first, which in turn means that facts aren't the goal, whatever content draws the most eyeballs is the goal.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That is incorrect. Medium is a publishing platform, but of the many writing efforts it carries, the ones that it pushes absolutely define it as a highly biased site in terms of what people are most likely to see. It is not in any way a level platform for its writers. Spend just a little time considering which articles they push to the front page, and you'll realize this.
There are plenty of worthy efforts that hit Medium. Very few people ever get to see them, though.
It's all about the eyeballs; because it's all about the money.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Umm, that's the way it's been for years.... You should have thought of "the way people are paid suck and will kill us down the road" before opening the third office.
You've been told to stop involving me and others in your criminal activities. You are in direct violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Slashdot is not a platform your illegal spam and illegal comments. Your activities have only caused Slashdot to tighten filters to the point that insightful commentary is now difficult to try to deal with you.
You have previously violated on Slashdot privacy rights, promoted offers without the express written consent of Slashdot Media, your content is destructive due to what has happened with Slashdot filters and embedding advertising without the express written consent of Slashdot media. All of these are against the Slashdot's "Terms of Use" and in turn you have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Your criminal activities are unacceptable and your continued persistence after being advised of such means you willfully and intentionally violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Slashdot's "Terms of Use" to further propogate your spam without a care that you are responsibile for further ruining discourse on Slashdot.
You've been asked to stop, you've been told to stop, you've even been banned and you continue. Your persistance in unethical and criminal behaviour is disgusting.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It sounds like you're referring to the "scoop" problem? There was an extra value in being first because of the delays in publishing or even getting it on a later news problem. That part has basically been crushed out of the system by Internet speeds.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I basically agree with you that I know little about Medium. My fuzzy recollection is that it sounded like a good idea, but when I looked at it, the reality was pretty much click-bait. The advertising links seemed rather weak, and that seems to be confirmed by the financial results of the article.
I'm suggesting a more general approach to funding better journalism. I've seen a number of minor variations on the old standards, but so far nothing I'd "invest" in.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Cease and desist your criminal activities immediately, APK. Your disgusting behaviour is unwanted.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This sock puppeting is still in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Slashdot's "Terms of Use", cease and desist your disgusting unethical and criminal activities immediately, APK. You are knowingly violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Slashdot's "Terms of Use" and you are adding more to your infractions.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Cease these criminal acitivites, immediately.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Immediately cease these criminal activities.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Your persistent willful criminal activities have revealed exactly what kind of person you are. Stop involving Slashdot and others in your crimes.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Cease your criminal activities immediately, APK.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You have been told to cease your criminal acts and you still persist, APK.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.