Oct 15, 2020
Good Morning What
Medium knows how to surprise you.
I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.
When, at Medium, they spoke about giving us a customizable profile page, that they wanted to support our relationship with our readers, I already knew it was just about colors and fonts.
But I hoped to be wrong.
Today, Medium gave me the good morning with the new “profile page.”
The double quotes are because calling it a profile page is an exaggeration.
Well, let’s see what the Medium company, there for years, with dozens of employees and dozens of million dollars available from funding only, was able to release.
Claps, highlights, responses
Gone.
Laconic?
I’ll add that letting us decide whether to show them or not could be a more respectful and useful solution, especially since they say that they want to improve our relationship with those who follow us and with the community.
Whether you wanted claps, highlights, and responses publicly available, they’re gone. No need to decide.
But don’t worry, they’re still public for notifications. Only Medium knows the logic behind that, but trust them.
Ah, do you want to check your own responses/highlights/claps privately, at least?
Nope.
No claps.
Highlights are now in the “Reading list”. Yes, that useless bookmark place that you never visit.
Responses are in “Published.” A messy mix of stories and responses.
User experience first, for Medium. Always.
Featuring and navigation
The only possibility of featuring something with the previous profile page was putting a story on the top of the pile. And even that was not fun, if you wanted to dig deeper into your history.
Even that is gone.
Replacement: nothing. At all. No featuring of any type.
UPDATE October 16, 2020: Seems that “pinning” a story to the top of your profile, like old “featuring” is now available.
Navigation, long desired, still to be seen. If ever.
All that your readers will see is a few of your latest, even fewer than before, sometimes scrolling from one story to another without even noticing.
Wow. That’s a customizable profile page indeed. Kind of portfolio, I’d say. If I was drunk. No, not even if I was drunk, actually.
List of followers
Gone.
I can no longer see who follows me.
…unless you use a hack (medium.com/@user/followers). Thanks, Celine Lai (Medium Followers: I Can’t See My Followers on Medium).
List of followees
Gone.
I can’t even see who I’m following.
I used to check and shrink that list, from time to time.
Useless, they decided. Removed.
Again, hack available: medium.com/@user/following.
About
160 chars. Links included.
Wow. That’s hyper-personalization.
Links are clickable on my profile page but not in my about. They decided that a vintage copy&paste can work too. And, please, don’t tell me that there’s still something to fix. Are they not even able to test a page simple like that?
Of course, nothing in the about is customizable.
By the way, readers can connect with me only on Twitter. Facebook is old times. LinkedIn is old times. Personal websites don’t exist at all. Don’t mention newsletters. Only handshaking on the platform founded by the same person who founded Medium. What a coincidence.
Editor of publications? How unlucky. Some have their publications in the about, some don’t.
One last subtle message from Medium. The “Top Writer” is on the about page only (for some of you). Not on your profile page. I know that Top Writer means nothing. Medium telling that openly is an honest move, at least.
My icon when navigating other profiles
Gone.
You must click on the new logo (on the right, because you expect it on the left, of course) and add one view to the home traffic, where you can see your usual icon, with the related menu.
Notifications on any profile page
Gone.
Reading time
No more near the title. Scroll to find it near the new evident “Read more.”
“Evident” was ironic.
Text preview
Luckily, this post is long enough to get the “read more” at the bottom of the preview.
I’m not at ease having readers skim my content on my profile page, like a Facebook feed.
I use titles, subtitles, and pictures, to invite my readers. Am I too old style? Please, let me deal with that myself and give me that suicidal option.
Social features are welcome but… I don’t want that kind of feed for my stories.
By the way, how the source of the featured picture can be of help in the preview is still a mystery, to me. Everything on Medium disappears and the source of the picture appears where it shouldn’t.
Apps
If you’re reading this from an app, you may be puzzled. Old profiles are still there, on the apps.
We all know that Medium apps are a separate reality. Not too separated for releasing the new logo, but separated for anything else.
Still having the old profile is maybe an unexpected perk of the incoherence festival.
So…
Medium, if this is your way to convince me to abandon my external websites, you’re wrong by far.
To say it all, you just proved how risky it is to rely on third-party platforms.
You provided a few great things, in the past: a good editor, a great community, and the most welcome MPP.
All the rest was only “changes.” I wished so much that all of that effort would go to a few desired features. Desired by readers, writers, and editors, I mean.
But this is not my platform.
And I just got one more reminder.
