I hate that that article made $19k. The author posted about it in a FB group for authors and I've been using it as an example ever since. The word we've been using lately to describe what's wrong with it is derivative. There's no originality or 1st hand expertise in it.
The agenda I came to Medium with was about this type of article. That article got paid well because it's clickable and readable. But it's neither on mission nor the type of thing that you can build a subscription business on.
And it's extra sad because we do have plenty of original business writing from VCs, entrepreneurs, practitioners. They are the ones with unique insights that you normally wouldn't get.
It's an issue of balance and we are currently wildly out of balance. There's room for some summary, i.e. derivative work. But we need to have a recommendation and curation system that works better for expertise. That's been most of my work and time will tell (hopefully measured in weeks)
This is super interesting — I appreciate the detailed insights here Nick!
I hate that that article made $19k. The author posted about it in a FB group for authors and I've been using it as an example ever since. The word we've been using lately to describe what's wrong with it is derivative. There's no originality or 1st hand expertise in it.
The agenda I came to Medium with was about this type of article. That article got paid well because it's clickable and readable. But it's neither on mission nor the type of thing that you can build a subscription business on.
And it's extra sad because we do have plenty of original business writing from VCs, entrepreneurs, practitioners. They are the ones with unique insights that you normally wouldn't get.
It's an issue of balance and we are currently wildly out of balance. There's room for some summary, i.e. derivative work. But we need to have a recommendation and curation system that works better for expertise. That's been most of my work and time will tell (hopefully measured in weeks)
I hope Casey chimes in. A lot of this is what we talked about that wasn't ready for the article. Thank you Nick.
And yes, the answer to recommendations is hybrid of machine and humans. I can't wait to add more human curation back into the mix.