How Medium can become better
Few ways to a better world
We will be discussing few possible features which can make Medium a better place than it’s already. I’ve kept things simple here, no implementation details and all.
Here we go…
Shop Section
As we already have a curated list of best articles on Medium, we can also have a “Shop Section” where we can get to know about best products and services around the world like a programming course, a book on design, an app which increases our value of life or anything.
A basic flow can be like this :-
- Advertisers pay the fees to list their product on Medium Shop.
- It must follow certain guidelines.
- We can see them and clap on them just like we do with articles.
- We might also end up buying them.
Medium can also launch their T-shirts, bags or bookmarks. (Damnn, I’ll love to buy them)
Direct Donation
Direct donations to writers or publications so that less clutter of “member articles” and more inspiration to write good articles.
We can have a “Donate” button somewhere near “Claps”, and yaa Medium can have some share of those donations, nobody should mind.
Medium Books
It will be great if top writers, designers, comedians of Medium come together to write books on topics ranging from programming, design, psychology, self-help or anything.
I strongly believe our technology is capable enough
- to bring people together
- to make them collaborate on a project
- and to give them credit for their works.
Medium can become to writers what’s Github is to programmers.
And obviously, these books must be paid so that readers get knowledge they deserve and authors and Medium get rewards they deserve.
These books must also be only readable on Medium website or apps, just to get rid or piracy.
Medium Meetups
Medium meetups around the world can be best way to bring writers and readers together, startups and fans(also called customers or clients) together.
That’s where people will show off Medium t-shirts and bags :P
Collaborative Translation
I want my mom and dad to read the articles which I love and if it will be in hindi(our native language) they will feel it’s written for them and will read it for sure. Collaborative transaltion of Medium articles can help solve this problem and can also bring more people to platform.
Let people translate articles together and give them reward(T-shirts, money or few weeks/months free subscription) depending on their contribution.
But I think Medium should decide first which posts are worth translating(like famous ones or ones targeting a certain geography) and then give people chance to translate.
To be global, you gotta be local.
The relation between writers and translators is same as relation between product team and sales team of a company.
Top contributors’ list
Release a monthly list of top 10 writers, translators, donators etc. for inspiration and rewards.
Adjustment of Subscription Charge
Adjust the subscription charge of membership according to the cost of living of the country. This way more people will sign-up for that.
For example, Amazon prime fees for USA is $99 per year and in India it’s 999₹(Indian Rupees) per year. $1 is somewhere between 60₹ to 65₹, so according to this it’s around $15 to $16 for Indians.
Flexibility to buy just one article
Sometimes people just don’t want to buy whole membership, they just want to read some articles which are paid(articles written specifically for Medium members).
Quick solution :- let them buy only that article(cost of article being adjusted to country, obviously).
We are living in shared economy.
Nobody wants to own a car, all I want is a quick ride.
Better Search
Medium should provide ways to filter search results. Filters like clap counts, sortings, latest etc. will help more people to find relavant contents easily.
And if Medium can provide me my search history, that will be better too :)
Let humans take actions, rather than algorithms.
Diversify Contents
Medium should try to bring writers of different subjects/topics to it’s platform. Topics like mechanical engineering, physics, mathematics and others like these ones.
I will keep updating this article with your suggestions and my brainslaps.
Sorry, to people at Medium, who are working hard to keep this platform engaging and alive, for distracting them with my feature-requests. But I will like to work with you all(I know what I did here 🙈).
By the way, it’s my first seriously published article on Medium.
Feel free to comment your thoughts 😃.
