Apparently, Medium Got it’s Membership Launch Wrong. Did We Start at a Bad Time?
Published in
2 min readMar 29, 2017
I’ve been a Medium reader for a while now, but only today published my first article (which will be of little interest to anyone but my students.)
Speaking of students, we just rolled out the Digital Media UVU Medium site and have begun actively encouraging and even teaching students how to engage.
But today my feed and recommendations are full of “Medium messed up” stories.
Did we start at just the wrong time? Nobody knows for sure, but here some ways to think about it.
- Medium defines the state of the art in content management, so whether Medium’s business model tweaks cause massive changes to the ecosystem or not, students will still be well-served to learn how to use it and to understand the principles behind it’s design.
- For now, Medium is where the UX design community hangs out. Is this a tipping point? The only answer to that question is, we will see, but I rather doubt that we will see a mass exodus any time soon.
- Is it worth paying for? Probably. While it seems clear what is being offered and what the benefits are, there is just enough confusion in the community, that for now, I think it’s best to wait and see.
- There has been no word about whether educational discounts or even waivers will become available, so that is another reason to wait and see. (This isn’t about membership, but we would like students and professors to be able to set up custom domains for free. Just saying.)
- For now, keep publishing, tagging and commenting as if nothing had happened.
