On: Ask HN: Why did medium.com "fail"?

[vbezhenar]

How do they monetize? I never tried to register. Do they ask money to actually read the content they did not even produce themselves?

I'd expect for them to monetize on ads. And ads show up regardless of registration status.

[TheOtherHobbes → vbezhenar]

I was looking at Medium yesterday for the first time after a long break.

"X free articles." OK. Fine.

How much does a subscription cost? No idea. That info isn't available without a signup. [1]

This is so fucking stupid. With other content sites I can see a price and I can decide if I think it's worth it.

With Medium it feels like they have something to hide.

Obviously I didn't sign up and I didn't click through.

If the content was good enough and if it was worth the money I would. But they way Medium is now, neither of those important details is visible.

[1] Or by Googling. Which works, but...

[LoganDark → TheOtherHobbes]

> How much does a subscription cost? No idea. That info isn't available without a signup.

On top of that, they don't let you specifically log into an account. They let you type in an email address, which will either log into an existing account or create a new account. Better hope you use the same email for every site. Also better hope you're not trying to check if an account exists or not, because the process of checking will just create a new account if not.

[wkat4242 → TheOtherHobbes]

That subscription cost thing is a really good point, totally forgot about that when I wrote the original comment, I also ran into that myself and I still don't know because I never created an account.

This is also a bad idea IMO because it brings up the feeling of "if you have to ask..."