The Medium is the message

I can see why Medium have made the move to encourage short “in-flow” posts.

It’s more instant. It fits with the zeitgeist of fast and free communication that we’re seeing in Snapchat and have seen for a while on Twitter.

It’s more engaging. Apps and services are more engaging when one invests oneself into them. Reading is a form of investment but writing is a greater investment. My perception of Medium up to this point has been that it’s a platform for longer, higher quality missives. As a result I’ve got a bunch of draft posts waiting for me to edit and polish them. Encouraging shorter posts will enable more people to step up that engagement ladder.

It encourages greater user frequency. More shorter messages will mean more frequent writing and more frequent things to see from the people you follow.

It makes Medium more consumable. There’s an enjoyment in reading a longer, well-written piece of text but it takes time — as Medium denotes by its reading time measurement. Often there isn’t time to read an interesting piece — I often send Medium posts to Pocket for later reading (shhh, don’t tell!), which means I read them off of Medium and don’t engage with Medium recommends or comments.

It’s more platformable. By this I mean that if Medium can establish itself as the place for medium length text then the next step is to turn that into a platform where that text can be embedded elsewhere in the web just like you can embed tweets now. It’s difficult to embed a piece of text that’s 1000 words long and retain good UX.

Ultimately, it gives greater reach and growth potential. All of the above add up to one thing. Shorter posts on Medium means that Medium is likely to reach and chime with a greater number of users. It seems natural to believe that there is an upper limit on the number of people who are going to be interested in reading and writing long-form text on a regular basis. The shorter form and ability for it to be shared more widely is likely to capture a lot more people. Growth means groats in “The Valley”. Show me your growth curve and I’ll show you my money.

I completely understand Medium’s change. But I don’t like it.

I’ve always thought that Medium is a brilliant name for this service. It’s a direct abuttment to Twitter. Twitter is for twittering — super-short, succinct and not always thoughtful dispatches. Medium is for medium length content: room for lexical leeway; space for fully-formed factoring.

However, as with all things where community participation is required, Medium’s users took it into what appears to be a slightly unintended direction. Medium’s editing tools and layout encouraged longer form prose not medium length thoughts. As such, Medium is currently a place where I expect well-written and long-ish reads. It’s more Long than Medium.

I can imagine that the recent Medium changes are actually a move to bring Medium back to how it was originally envisioned. Ev Williams helped create Twitter so who better to understand the need for a place that enables a “follow-recommend” experience around slightly longer form text than Twitter permits?

Ev believes that stream-of-consciousness text can sit alongside longer form prose. Indeed he says that really it harks back to the bloggy roots of Internet opinion. But then what really is the differentiator for Medium? What does it stand for?

“The medium is the message” is a well worn phrase used to explain that the tool you use for your communication is a fundamental part of the communication.

By making this change, Medium is diluting itself as a medium and thus it is diluting the communication transferred by it.

Ev says that “the middle ground is where Medium has always intended to be,” just as its name implies. However, any military general or price-setting retailer will tell you that the middle ground is best avoided.

I like Medium and I love lots of the content on it. I hope these recent changes don’t irrevocably dilute its character else I’ll be tempted to use a different medium for my messages.