The TOS is a whole lot more than any other company I know of. Thank you.

I have one concern.

My interpretation and understanding of how all of this fascinating architecture works, is based on many things, but one fundamental thing is a flaw. It is what separates the tech side from the writing side. There is a chasm there. Not a bridge.

It is the recommend button.

I totally get how it’s used, and the power it has at Twitter.

But this is not Twitter, and the recommend button in time will become a weakness.

Indeed, the idea of the recommend button — or whatever you want to call it — is ubiquitous from Google+ to Facebook, to Tumblr, to le Tube, and the paradigm is designed to increase traffic.

Something might go viral. This expectation is ephemeral.

On a site such as this, you’re not dealing with a contemporary blog structure that is, in reality, a design feature of the past based on the habits of 14-year-olds who have to be TOLD what has value and what is candy.

Even and perhaps especially, for Facebook to even consider adding what amounts to a dislike button means that they’ve not only done the research, they’ve concluded that it’s time to make the architecture different.

Medium is itself a different experience entirely. You are inherently a part of a magazine editorial structure where the writer is also the editor and the art director. And all of that is fine, and perhaps even revolutionary as a publishing platform. But the recommend button is pulling you back. Back to a time when Twitter had just taken off on its amazing journey.

I would argue that their favorite button competes with their retweet. I would argue that Twitter is now compelled to reinvent itself. If it stays the same, it will die.

This is more of an audience of people who care about writing, and a good many of them are professional writers, editors, publishers, and photographers.

Who, while they might recommend to their hearts content, would vociferously deny they are a part of marketing herd behavior.

You can click through Medium like a gun, and recommend, recommend, recommend. No sweat.

But there is something else going on here.

What is popularity, and what is worth.

The recommend button is tech at its worst, and publishing at its laziest.

You have ALREADY designed an alternative, and that is highlighting where people are by association recommending, but the difference between recommending versus highlighting is that highlighting tells the reader (and the writer) WHY you liked something,

There is a thought there the recommend button does not have and never will.

The average Twitter user and the average Medium user are very different people.

User video usage on Medium has been upgraded. But Twitter is losing that battle. Not many Twitter users can tell you the difference between a .mov and a m4v. The typical Twitter user is still not using video. Twitter is floundering with video.

And it shows.

As an editor, I can tell you what I like, and I can back it up. With the recommend button, I am only following the crowd, and anyone in publishing will tell you that the end result is less meaningful content because this is a crowd of people who want to do more than follow a crowd of popularity contests vying for attention.

What happens is that many, many good things die in oblivion.

To date, you have put that on us.

If we build an audience and work hard (please, this is so the past), we will develop a readership.

Maybe. Few people have the tenacity for it.

A few of us will do that. But the numbers of US will be quite small. People who have not yet broken into the writing business will and do feel that this paradigm cannot be for them, and very low recommends will be interpreted as a wall, not a bridge where there is any worthwhile feedback.

It’s already happening. I see them leaving Medium every day. And you will fail.

Because the recommend button is pop culture superficial cotton candy on a site that has a lot more to do with writing that it does with cotton candy. When the Cotton Candy Department becomes the focus that a recommend button keeps alive, people who value content will walk away.

You are not Twitter. Your audience expects content that has value. You will begin to fall apart when your audience — one that values content — begins to understand that what the tech world values are the numbers from what is popular.

Ask them.

They write.

Ask tech.

They collate numbers.

Writers care about writing. Even as they participate in the popularity contest, they still value content.

I am smart enough to know what I value in content. I do not need a herd to point me in the right direction. And the Medium is not a lot of meaningless numbers. You might THINK you have a handle on how users behave through their use of the recommend button, but I am here to tell you that it’s a very tired model, and inappropriate for people who say they value content and the making of that content.

In our little universe, it’s called creativity. To get very few recommends, leaves too many writers in the dust. It creates no enthusiam for the Medium. Quite the opposite. This translates to the recommend button IS the dislike button because the aggregate by fiat remains what is popular and not necessarily what has value.

If I wanted to read TMZ, I would. If I wanted to write for Esquire, I would, and have. If wanted to publish Danielle Steel, I would. I do not want any of that. I want the Medium to work as more than a marshmallow following other marshmallows. The recommend button becomes offensive.

Becoming relevant has nothing to do with becoming irrelevant..

And the recommend button is a very wet blanket, and while it might appear to blaze a path based on popularity, there’s nothing long-term around it. It will come back to become beneath contempt, and as laughable as the term: friend.

Mass marketing CAN BE valuable content. But it comes back to haunt itself with this crowd when it becomes, in fact, the format people use to troll their numbers up.

Find another way. Or it will come back to haunt you, too. Your highlighting capability is already interactive with Facebook and Twitter. Build on that.

WHY push people out when they can’t get their numbers up even when people will tell you that they are not into it for the numbers.

The recommend button is not your friend, and I would argue that it will keep you in niche publishing.

You are not the New York Times with its ten best books. You are the Medium. Turning what you do into a Twitter-like popularity contest renders you as fast food, and that is not what we are here for.

I would understand it would be very hard for you to drop the feature. After all, it’s everywhere else.

Exactly. The. Problem.

I will make up my own mind about what I would recommend, and I will highlight it, and post it on Twitter. I will not participate in a popularity contest because it’s mindless, it does not require that I explain in any way WHY, I liked something, it’s lazy, and it’s going to eventually be dropped by companies that understand good writing or valuable content can stand on its own two feet.