Reflection on the future of Blogging
Medium for me has been an interesting experience. I enjoy the concept of the platform as well as the easy of their user-friendly features for uploading articles. I like the design aesthetic more than other blogging platforms like BlogSpot or square space. I like the cleaner lines looks. Although, as a designer, I wish it gave me more control than the basic functions to give my posts and page a more individual look. I ultimately do not mind however, because I would hate to see some of the designs less graphically inclined people would create simply because they clearly don’t know what they are doing like on wix. I also like that I wasn’t forced to pay for someone to design my content for me like GoDaddy. I enjoy the professional uniformity that medium gives.
I also like that medium is not as ad centric as some other blogging websites. In fact, I have yet to run into any ads at all during my time on medium. As a consumer, I feel like medium respects my attention by allowing me to focus on the story I am reading versus trying to distract me with a product mentioned in the story, a pair of shoes or like the example below formal dresses I was looking at previously online.
I like the concept that medium has created its own community of writers and more specifically bloggers, that can grow and learn within their platform. It creates a smaller sense of place which I think is important in writing. It helps define an audience in a way that I think would be challenging otherwise. I like the concept of the tags that divide stories into categories or sections. This is so that the readers of the medium community can find stories that they are either interested in or want to research and learn about. I found it helpful that in the beginning of creating a medium profile, medium asks you for words and categories that you are interested in so they know which stories to put in their update emails to you or put on the reading section of your homepage. This helps grow and strengthen the community of both bloggers making connections and readers wanting to learn.
I also like the accessibility medium gives to both readers and writers. I feel that first time bloggers are given as much care and attention as those who have a large following. I also like that it gives a more personal voice to bigger name people like politicians or celebrities. Medium seems to base their attention to the quality of writing, subject of post and the attractability that a post has.
Overall, I would use medium again if I were to create another blog. I would also recommend this software to anyone who wanted to start a blog or anyone wishing to read other people’s blogs.
Blogging I think will always have a place, especially on a place such as the internet. People need that ability of interconnectivity for their thoughts and ideas both personal and professional. I believe that like its still popular predecessor, the diary, blogging will continue on for hundreds of years. I believe that diaries will not die out either. However, with everyday technological advances, I believe one day their forms might become unrecognizable to the present-day user and audience. That doesn’t mean that the art will die. As I have stated in previous works in this class, people will always turn to other people for advice, knowledge and stories. These three principles are the main pillars of blogging. Since people have a vested interest in both being the creators and being the audience, blogging will have a space for the rest of time. It’s like the telegraph, the technology can only be improved upon, the basic concept will never go away since people are now used to ease it gives them.
It is hard to say whether or not a specific platform will live or die. I would like to think that with the good setup and programming that medium.com has now that they could still run a decade into the future. I think the biggest problem medium will have in the future is keeping up with the technology. They seem to have a great grasp on the people that make up their audience and I don’t believe that the ones who are already there are going anywhere. Medium is also appearing to steadily grow its audience and readership based on the number of different authors and topics which appear on the homepage. I believe these factors give medium the best chance for success. However, what I cannot predict is when the webpage and the internet as we know will become obsolete.
In ten year to fifteen years, I’m unsure whether or not I’ll be on medium. I think this answer really depends on what I decide to do with my life. Maybe I’ll write a great book and become well-known from it and I’ll use my blog to share shorter, more recent thoughts on my subject. Or maybe I’ll become recognizable enough to have my name be a draw for people to actually want my opinion on something I have no real authority over. Maybe I’ll be greedy and publish nothing else anywhere without someplace where I get loyalties from it. More plausibly, maybe run a group foster home and I’ll be a parenting blogger about all the crazy messes and dramas teenagers can get caught up in, with ethically changed names of course. Maybe I’ll be a book publisher, or a wedding planner and I become too emotionally invested in other people’s stories to try to write any of my own that I wish to share and publish. That has always been my biggest struggle as a blogger and a writer in general. I often find myself lacking the authoritative voice to be able to tell someone that this is the way it is. I’d like to think that completing college has given me the confidence to improve in this area, but I think time is the only thing that can tell. Maybe I’ll write a blog about my life that Food Network will decide to give me my own TV show as well.
