This thing is here

And I don’t quite know what to use it for

It’s fair to say that I try out most things on the internet when I come across them. I’m no super-early adopter, but sometimes I do find myself wondering why I signed up for That New Thing and what it’s actually going to do for me.

This, Medium, is one of those things. I don’t quite know what I want to use it for, and yet I find myself beguiled by it in odd ways. Other, similar sites (Svbtle, for example) don’t seem as attractive to me (although, yes, I have a profile there too, for no reason other than sticking my name on a thing to make it mine in some way). This one however, has that something that means it keeps popping into my head.

Maybe it’s because of the long-form-ness of it. Medium is a place after all where one sees lots of essays, news articles, opinion pieces. Hold that up next to blogging (all but moribund in many cases; my own blog gets updated far less frequently than it ought), Twitter (short-burst thinking; carefully — or not — crafted potshots into the ether) or Tumblr (great for medium-sized stuff and reblogging others’ work) and somehow it seems like Medium has got something going for it that the others haven’t. Damned if I know what it is though.

Maybe this is what I can use Medium for: the long-form ramble; the thought-process-on-a-page that I’ve enjoyed so much since the days of LiveJournal, and which I’ve not kept up as much as I would like. A bit like a column in the local rag, written by a minor nobody who knows next to nothing about anything, but has a vehicle for their opinion.

Of course, I could just be the toddler who is even now innocently widdling in someone else’s paddling pool. Until someone comes and scolds me, though, let’s assume not.