Disqus - Latest Comments for evhead

Re: Medium+is+a+shopping+mall+

evhead — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 16:24:11 -0000

It's a clever analogy -- in fact, one I used myself in prior incarnations pre-subscription -- but there's are false assumptions in your theory.

First, a clarification on, "every visitor you’re able to drive yourself is forced to pay the admission fee."

If you choose to publish outside the Medium paywall (and not earn money), there is no "admission fee." Your content is totally free to everyone, just as it is here on this blog.
If you are trying to earn money, visitors you bring may hit the paywall -- but there are also many that are already paying subscribers, and all they have to do is read your content for you to earn part of what they're already paying.

In theory, you're right: Ads would be lower friction and maximize audience. However, the reality is that monetization of written content via ads pays virtually nothing. It's possible for publishers with strong brands and sales teams (though there's a reason almost every major publisher has put up a paywall). For UGC content, there's no way writers would make meaningful money (even if Medium might).

By building a bundled subscription, not only does it bring traffic, thousands of writers work together to increase the likelihood that someone will pay. As a result, they make far more -- and see far more audience -- than they would on their own.

Re: The Newest Way To Game Twitter - Fake Followers

evhead — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:45:04 -0000

I didn't mean to imply there's *nothing* nefarious happening on Twitter at all. There is spam, which we've been combating for a while. I'm saying that that's not the reason for the sudden jump in followers on these specific accounts.

Re: The Newest Way To Game Twitter - Fake Followers

evhead — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:38:57 -0000

Thanks for the analysis. However, I believe your conclusion is wrong. As @Will points out, above, the reason for this is that each of these accounts is listed in our Suggested Users list, which is now the last page of our signup process. The followers aren't fake, they're just new users -- which is why they don't have updates or profile icons.

The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren't following anyone, so we're trying to help get them started. This is a v 1.0 of this functionality, and we hope to make it a lot better. But I don't believe there's anything nefarious going on.

Re: Overnight success takes a long time

evhead — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:44:02 -0000

Well put, Paul