Medium 2017 wishlist
I got an email from Medium saying I was among the top 10% Medium users. That was surprising. I didn’t write much. Most of the stories were read from the Pocket app.
Maybe most of Medium users are lazy.
That’s a good thing. That’s what makes Medium great. What if everyone had a Medium account. It would become like Facebook. We’ll have boring people who post 6 selfies a day. This brings me to…
Don’t target the entire population
That’s what happened to Apple. Their initial user base was creatives. But as they went for world domination, they betrayed their original user base.
Right now Medium is a place where people who can rationalise and think share stories and discuss. I think it’s best to leave it that way
Don’t repeat stories
While there are people complaining that their stories aren’t seen by enough people. I’m sitting here seeing the story in my mail, then my personal feed, then again in the top stories section.
The place occupied by a story that’s already read could be given to a new story. That’s a win for the writer and reader.
Swipe to next story
Facebook’s Instant Articles does it. So does Google AMP. Why not Medium? It would be nice if we could just swipe sideways to read the next story from that writer.
There’s an annoying thing in the Medium android app. If I’m in the “Reading roulette”section, and I want to go to my personal feed, I have to scroll all the way up until I can click on the button. Here it would be natural if I could just swipe right to get to the next section.
Bookmarks icon on left [on the desktop website]
There are share buttons and recommend button. Why not the bookmark button? I have to scroll all the way down to bookmark a story.
Trump on Medium?
I got an email from Thought Pills | Picks titled “Make Medium great again”. This reminded me of Trump (of course). Man, he would get bullied on Medium. I wonder if he can even explain his policies in any more than 140 characters.
However, It would be wrong to brush him off as a crazy guy.
Improve offline access
Thanks to a busy schedule most of my reading is done while commuting. This means I have to read without an Internet connection. I wrote to Medium to introduce offline functionality for the Android app a few months ago. I’m still waiting….
I usually save stories to Pocket and read it later. And I got to the top 1% of Pocket app users!
Dark mode on the website?
I don’t know if a lot of people want this feature. But I think it would be nice feature.
This brings me to the next point.
Polls
Medium is a great way for people to come together and discuss on various topics. Creating a poll would beautifully summarise users’ opinions.
Now, what’s this?
Medium expects me to choose a publication from among these microscopic icons.
This works fine on iOS 10 but it appears that 👆 way on my old android phone running on Jelly Bean.
These are the features I would love to see on Medium the next year. What are yours?
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