The Death of Medium
Or How Marketing Will Ruin a Good Thing
Medium is doomed. Its symptoms — being an amazing place to share content. Its diagnosis — marketer influx disease. Its prognosis — business overrun.Why? Because as the great social media marketer, and Medium contributor, Gary Vaynerchuk once said “Marketers ruin everything”.
When I came across Medium the first time, I was instantly drawn to the beautiful simplicity of the site. It gave readers an easy to read format and writers a way to get out their thoughts without much distraction.
The Medium mantra of putting words first offered an instant connection to someone who could use a few extra characters every once in awhile.
“In short, we think that words (still) matter, so we built a better system for sharing them” -Medium
I became extremely excited to share Medium with all my friends. I posted information on every social media network I belonged to and started writing. First, I posted an old article from my business blog in an effort to get to know the platform. Nobody really bothered paying any attention.
So I tried posting a weird thought that had been going through my mind about sleeping. And that one got a view reads which was exciting.
Maybe figuring out what Medium was all about wasn't going to be so tough. Delving deeper, Becky Lang offered a great article from the perspective of a newcomer which gave a positive outlook on what it means to write on Medium. It gave me hope to see a community growing of like minded individuals.
Even though, at times, I feel out of my league in the Medium community, the potential to write for people whose stories inspire me is too alluring to stay away.
And that is when my outlook started turning sour. Medium is too good at getting people to come back, to write, and to share. It’s a good problem to have for a growing website who wants to gain users. But those wise words keep coming back to me, “Marketers ruin everything”.
Let me run you through a quick marketer influx infection scenario.
The system, in this case Medium, begins by offering something different and exciting. It’s of a high caliber but is so new the looming marketer influx infection stays at bay. Then after a few people playing away without causing much fuss there’s an increase of great talent. This drives more ordinary people who freely spread throughout the system but are untainted by marketer influx. Finally the system hits a tipping point and the first of the infected slips past the guards. Once marketer influx gets in and signals success, the flood gates open and your system is completely destroyed in a fatal blow. It’s total business overrun. The tainted wanderers are driven out in droves until the marketer influx sucks every last marketing dollar from the system. And then it moves to the next victim.
How long will it be until the simplicity of Medium falls victim to marketer influx? How long until we are seeing plugins, content written purely to drive sales, and businesses taking over? I worry because it was a thought this marketer had and there is not a chance I am alone.
The prognosis is not good.
Do you think Medium can survive the onslaught of business marketers who are looking for the next place to get their content front and center?
