My Medium Experience & Thoughts
I began using Medium in 2018 for my Digital Storytelling intensive writing class. We used the blogging site to post our writing assignments, along with our video essays. Prior to last year, I had never heard of the site, which I blame mainly on not being a blogger — -so I thought. After doing some research, I discovered that I was indeed a part of the blogging world. I was a micro-blogger. I was an avid user of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I thought these social media applications were just that, but some are also microblogs, such as Twitter, and the others include microblogging characteristics with the ability to give brief and fast updates.
When I created my account, I did not bother to check out the site, and get familiar with its features, because I was only going to post for my class. It was not until a year later, in an actual blogging class, that I for the first time checked the site out beyond the “new story,” and “ready to publish” tabs. The site is a really useful platform for bloggers.
I personally enjoyed the fact that the platform is free of charge…well free of charge to an extent. Avid bloggers probably aren’t too fond of their monthly five-dollar option to an upgrade, for reading “smart” stories or stories that are in-depth tailored content. Medium will give you three views of these “smart” stories before it prevents you altogether from seeing any more. It also doesn’t help that they advertise a really noticeable “upgrade” button in the upper right corner throughout the entire time you are active on the site.
The most valuable feature in my opinion is “Stats.” As a blogger you want to know how much traffic you are generating and what topic is creating that traffic so that you can gear towards it more. The Stats feature shares how many views, how many reads, the read ratio, and how many fans your post has. Views are the number of visitors who clicked on a story’s page, while Reads tells you an estimate of how many viewers have read the entire story. Fans represent the number of claps you received from viewers, which is also a unique feature.
The only drawback for me while using Medium is that I can’t design my pages. I would like to add color and designs to make the page more appealing to look at, instead of all black and white. For this reason, I flocked to Wordpress. I would have inserted a link to my page, but after an hour of trying to design and set my page up, I gave up and deleted it. So, after all, I did appreciate the simplicity of Medium.
It’s quite interesting to see how others use Medium. One “author” in particular that we discussed in class, appeared to be using Medium in a way to get bloggers email addresses and sell them to other upcoming bloggers who are looking for more traffic. He blogged about blogging and how to become a better blogger, all while advertising this class that taught bloggers to grow their following base. Interesting eh?
I believe blogging has reached its max. Traditional blogging turned into microblogging, microblogging turned into vlogging. How else can it enhance without turning into something completely different that already exist and has a title?
