I noticed this also, starting with YFI.
And I think there's one major reason a
BitcointalkANN is not the standard anymore.
It's because 98 percent of new projects are
on Ethereum. And most of those devs are
Ethereum maxis, so you can't force them to
write a Bitcointalk ANN.

I do not see it as a fair launch for a few reasons.
Twitter and medium are algo based news feeds.
What one person sees on their home page is not
what another person sees. And Medium is a
paywalled site, which makes no sense for Ethereum
projects, because they promote decentralization.