Dumb letters to Medium's new SEO
Happy Friday,
Man, I am so glad writers don’t run Medium.
They’d run it right into the ground with good intentions.
They say the path to hell is paved with good intentions and I don’t know who “they” are, but they’re right on that one. Humans have a tendency to see a problem, misunderstand what caused it, solve it wrong and make everything worse.
I’ve been a business/marketing consultant for over 20 years and I see it all the time in my work. Like when people say sales are low, so they need more traffic. I tell them more traffic will make sales go down more. They’ll lose what few rankings they do have and their organic traffic will go down even more. Yay, even less sales.
We humans tend to see a problem (for example, lack of sales) but don’t really understand why it’s happening and end up making it worse.
Same thing is happening at Medium right now.
On July 12, Ev Williams stepped down and Tony Stubblebine became the new CEO of Medium. Since then, there’s been a glut of “open letters” to him.
If he took half the advice writers are giving him, the place would become a shat-hole so fast it would make our heads spin.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Aesop said that back in the 6th century. It’s still true.
I want to write about the dumb letters I’m reading because maybe we can collectively add some sanity to the conversations happening over there.
Here’s the #1 request I see writers making…
“Dear Coach Tony, please please please devalue/ban/de-monetize meta posts.”
On the surface, I get it. A lot of people hate meta posts. You don’t read Forbes and see “how to make money on Forbes” posts, right? A lot of them are pure garbage, that’s absolutely true.
You know what’s worse than meta posts? Censorship.
That’s a Pandora’s box that, for all his screw ups, Ev was smart enough not to open. Once Medium decides it’s okay to censor, where does that end? It’s the same kind of thinking that results in book burnings. Just because *I* don’t like something, does that mean it should be censored and banned?
There’s a better solution. But one more first…
Another hot button even Tony Stubblebine himself complained about.
Quality.
It concerns me that the new CEO is bitching about quality.
Not because quality is stellar over there. It’s not. There’s a lot of crap content. We all know it. A robot writes better than some of the garbage over there.
But once we start talking about “quality,” it begs the question — as determined by who? Medium editors? A man who built two publications based on marketing and self growth and said he doesn’t “understand” fiction, personal essays or poetry?
Shouldn’t the reader decide what quality is?
Are you such a poor judge of quality that you need someone to tell you what’s good enough for you to read? Isn’t that just another flavor of censorship?
Know what the real solution is?
Medium needs to stop shoving content in our faces. If you go to the homepage on a desktop, you see two tabs. Following and recommended. Recommended is the default. On mobile, I’m not sure readers have the choice. Some just see recommended.
Get rid of recommended content. Poof, gone. So all I see on the homepage is people I follow. And all you see is people you follow.
Both problems solved instantly.
If I’m following someone who writes meta posts or lousy quality according to me, all I have to do is unfollow. Done. Without censoring, and without anyone else arbitrarily deciding what constitutes “quality.”
And no — new writers won’t become invisible. We can still find plenty of new faces by clicking on topics or publications. So Voila, publications actually matter again.
Why are we talking about censoring?
Why are we talking about someone else telling us what quality is?
Because we don’t understand the real problem and we just don’t want to see the crap we’ve been seeing. The solution isn’t censorship and someone else deciding what quality is. The solution is to get rid of recommended content.
One more.
A lot of people are real excited by the talk of the new CEO paying for external reads.
Boy, are they in for a rude surprise.
In an interview with Zulie Rane, Stubblebine said he can’t see implementing that for all writers. It’s not feasible. He thinks it would encourage “some” people to use bad SEO practices and that would be bad for Medium.
But he’s prepared to hand pick somewhere around 50 people who bring in Google traffic and throw some extra money at them. Hand. Pick.
Still excited about external views?
Don’t hold your breath.
Did I miss anything you’d like to see change?
What I wrote this week…
5 Examples Of Bad Quality Writing If You’re Not Sure What That Means
5 Brilliant & Talented Women Who Inspired Disney’s Cruelest Villains
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, I’d sure appreciate if you click the heart to say thanks. Won’t cost you a single penny. :)
xo,
Linda
The Internet Experience declined on a near-90-degree angle when algorithms were introduced on all the big sites. I could not agree with you more in getting rid of Recommended. At the very *very* least, make "show less like this" actually do something. Additionally, I went in to tailor my recommendations and yet I still see articles on topics I explicitly removed because I'm sick of them. It's broken! Get rid of it!
What excellent insights. Sure hope Stubblebine has equal smarts.