Medium, Blogging, and the Future
My Personal Thoughts on Medium
Medium’s Foundation — A Stream Lined Platform
Medium is an incredibly unique blogging platform started by super group of blogging and social media entrepreneurs, including Twitter’s very own Ev Williams. Its minimalist approach takes a note from twitter — It’s less about the tools, and more about the community. By limiting what Medium offers, it instead makes it’s users focus on high quality content itself, and the community withing the site.
What I think — The Downfalls of Medium
While I have to admit my I’m a novice blogger, but in my short time experimenting I have found Medium’s lack of customization frustrating. Is it really necessary to limit the size of photos? More so, why did Medium find it necessary to eliminate the tools any basic word processor offers? I mean.. The word processor is uses doesn’t even work that well to begin with! At times, it missed obvious errors, found errors in correct writing, or underlined words that it really should have recognized. As a platform that only offers the basics, I feel the basics should be able to function well, which was often just not the case. Also, whats up with the login feature, are passwords not cool anymore? The little things build up to a really frustrating experience.
From A Publishers Point of View
As a home-base for a publication with shared editors, I think Medium again fails. It’s customization, among other things, is again it’s downfall. The process of first learning to standardize how we posted and shared was more than a bit difficult. (albeit we are a bit of a dysfunctional group.) Even so, when it was finally understood, our publication quickly found its limitations. First, there is no way to unpublish a submitted draft; a simple capability that for some reason is missing. Second, the feedback system just didn’t work that well; comments were limited in characters, the way comments were lumped were frustrating, and all together editing features were just simply lacking. Again, just little quirks that big time annoyed me.
The Good — Medium’s Saving Grace
With that said, there were some things I did like about Medium. The tagging system does work exceptionally well for giving me personalized content I want to read on my homepage, which is really a unique feature to Medium. The tags act more like subcategories, which you get to choose three for your post to be submitted under. Users when registering, pick their categories of interest, which show up on their homepage. I know it’s small when compared to my complaints, but it makes a world of difference. I believe this feature 100% creates the community and social platform Medium was founded on. This alone I believe is the reason why Medium will stick around.. Which leads me to:
My Verdict — Where The Future Takes Medium
Here it is folks, though I’m sure you’re not surprised. I will be taking this opportunity to kiss this innovative and streamlined publishing platform goodbye. It just doesn’t cut it for what I need! We have already witnessed blogging transform from casual to professional, and I believe this trend is only going to continue as blogs progress. The bold stance of Medium as a social platform simply doesn’t cut it for me; I’m a crummy writer and I don’t particularly love communicating through high quality writing. I and many others need blogs as a professional, customizable tool to publish their business’s news and portfolios. Medium misses this huge need in blogs of the future and I believe Medium will always hurt for it. In ten years time Medium will still be around, but it does need work.
I really do wish it the best, it’s a neat idea.. Just not for me.
