Why Medium needs to create a strong partnership with Twitter and get in bed with Storify.

My main objective for writing these posts is to share strategy ideas and mostly see other people tear my posts into a thousand pieces with even better ideas. I’m a firm believer in the “one idea creates another” theory. I love the idea of Medium, mostly because it’s a platform where you can write things (short things), but at the same time not take yourself too seriously. The first platform I used to express myself in this fashion was Twitter, I would rant and hope I get responses upon those rants to spark discussion. Hence my whole Twitter buy button rant among others. (Tweets from April 8th, 2014, @CJoeBlack)

In my opinion (a very modest one I promise) ranting is one of the most important elements of Twitter. There are many users who connect with many other users and form communities based upon ranting. I’m sure many users have requested a feature on Twitter that would better house ranting tweets, but I’m guessing Twitter hasn’t gotten around to it yet. People must be tired of having to scroll for minutes to catch the beginning of a rant, at least I know I am. I believe this is the perfect place for Medium to fit in (no pun intended). As a growing platform that is linked with Twitter, I believe if Medium were able to house rants as posts and Twitter allowed these posts to be accessible via profile it would help increase the amount of users and engagement on Medium. This would solve two problems right out of the gate. Medium has a strategic advantage to solve a problem for Twitter and to connect users to its platform to use it the way it’s intended. To my knowledge Medium is a platform created to write concise posts that convey a strong message. This is what I believe Twitter rants are, messages that speak more than 140 characters, but don’t warrant an extremely long blog post. It’s not short, it’s not long, it’s Medium.

In case you were wondering where Storify fits in this mix, here we are. So you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, isn’t this idea what Storify is? No, these are two entirely different ideas. The idea of Storify is to use tweets and other social media posts to create a story. The way Storify operates is using the tweets/other platform posts as highlights.

The idea I have for Medium is to allow users to take the material and create a Medium post with it. A post such as this one. The rants would serve as a skeleton, or structure for a user to then expand on. This relationship is something that Storify can take advantage of. This is possible because as individuals rant on Twitter they will be able to house the responses on the Storify platform and import the Medium posts onto the Storify platform as a story. In essence, the Medium post title (First rant tweet) along with a link to the Medium post would be provided and the responses would play as comments for the Medium post on Storify. This would allow the Medium platform to stay clean (no ugly comments) and still have high engagement. If a Twitter user missed the rant they would be able to access the Medium post via Twitter profile (along with other posts) and read it on the Medium platform (or Medium reader for Twitter if you want to be an overachiever @ev). Being able to access Medium through a Twitter profile would inspire users to create more Medium posts, as well as increase user engagement on both platforms. More users would promote their Storify stories as well, because showing how individuals respond to your rants is what grows communities and gains followers on all platforms. Please share your thoughts! Until next time… Keep Strategizing!

Carl,

Twitter/Instagram: CJoeBlack
LinkedIn: Carl H. Joseph-Black
Email: CarlJoeBlack@Gmail.com

Disclaimer: I am in no way shape or form saying I created the twitter buy now button, I’m only showing my tweets recommending the buy now button (2 months before the buy now button was made public) as an example of ranting on Twitter.

Disregard if this violates any conflicts of interest for @ev

http://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-buy-now-button-pops-up-on-mobile/