How I Choose Reading Material
When I read, I like picking articles from a “best of” list. I think it’s the most efficient way to consume content especially in places where you know whatever is on the page will probably interest you. This is how I feel about Medium. I know that everyday there are thousands of interesting articles published in my own areas of interest which are technology, business and sports. When I find articles in these specific areas with a lot of recommends I’ll read them because I trust the quality will be high. I trust the judgement of my fellow Medium readers.
Now this type of content finding / sifting used to be very easy to do. Medium had a best of the month feature that listed 1 to 100 of the most recommended pieces of each month. I discovered a lot of great writers in this manner. Then about a year and a half ago medium removed this feature. They dumped it in the recycle bin and replaced it with top stories of the day. Now this works okay, but its frustrating when the number 1 and 2 are duplicated for a whole week straight. And some days you just don’t have good content whereas for a whole month you can’t go wrong.
So if I’m not being clear enough I miss Medium’s best of the month page and my product request for them is to bring this back. That’s all I ask for.
Simplicity is key
I must admit, I do enjoy one particular top of the day article list in hckrnews. The unofficial Hacker News alternative has a top 10 of the day filter for posts with the most community upvotes. I like this top 10 list more than Medium’s because you can see 20 articles (two days) of content without having to scroll. You also have a much simpler UI being just the comments, upvotes, title and website where the article is located. The simplicity is key on hckrnews whereas on Medium it’s a little more cluttered. You have a larger font size, graphics and a preview of the first sentence of the article. This means scrolling and more work for the user. For content selection, particularly any type of content that needs to be read, I find the hckrnews UI far better.
Like the Medium community, I trust people’s upvotes on Hacker News, and almost always the posts with lots of upvotes will be something awesome. It allows me to get to the quality and ignore the bullshit. This is how I enjoy reading in terms of consuming only a few high quality articles a day that I’ll learn from. Hacker News also has an excellent commenting thread system for each post and this allows you to get an even deeper insight into the topic.
For other content platforms like YouTube, they are moving more towards a subscriber orientated approach that is like having different television channels. This is especially noticeable in their new material design interface, with the left sidebar represented by channels you’ve subscribed to and the number of new videos from those channels. I don’t mind this content approach either because you form a loyalty to the content creator.
Medium see’s the opportunity in this type of content presentation too represented by it’s recent revamp of it’s homepage. The first thing you see is “new from your network” which is based on your reading habits and the people you follow. However, in my opinion it’s a bit shit. What I do like about what they’re doing is this noteworthy supporting of voices campaign. They are showcasing writers like Quincy Larson and Alana Massey. In the article explaining what noteworthy is all about it says that:
the magic of Medium is more than browsing top stories, it’s about following the idea of these powerful voices overtime and building a connection with them.
I agree with this but I also kind of disagree. Connecting with individual writers is something Medium is not good at. It’s UI is not really geared towards following or subscribing to writers. However, I guess this is what they are working on. With some tweaks to the profile pages and the way you see who you’ve subscribed to, things could change.
But in the long run readers should have both ways of discovering new content: from the best of the month list and from the subscribed to list. No mumbo jumbo “new from your network” or “you might also like”. Keep it clean and let users decide how they should read.
