‘Manifestos that change the world’
Medium is like an official, long-form extension to Twitter, having been founded by one of the same entrepreneurs. Ev Williams created Medium because, although he loves Twitter, he believes there’s a need for a ‘better place’ both for ‘little stories that make your day better’ and ‘manifestos that change the world’.
Right now, it’s important that PRs know about Medium. It’s in invite only beta and although it hasn’t received quite the same amount of ‘can you get me an invite’ pre-launch fever as Gmail or Google+ did, it’s likely that a high percentage of online influencers, especially bloggers, are seeking ways of getting access to write on Medium.
A quick tour
Collections are Medium’s organisational tool. Content you write can be posted into a collection. Collections are not predefined. If you spot a gap, then the platform allows you to fill it, after which you become the founder and curator of that collection. For example, on receiving my invitation to join Medium, I went looking for a collection about reputation, a topic we spend time discussing at Hanover.
I founded the On Reputation collection. Others can post directly to this collection or add articles they’ve read to it. The ability to post the same article into more than one collection is the equivalent of Twitter’s retweet or Tumblr’s reblog.
Editor’s Picks is Medium’s front page, where its team share some of the best writing and most commented articles of the moment. The method of commenting is one of Medium’s most novel features. You’ll be all too familiar with the concept of tracked changes. Medium allows readers to make notes; these are paragraph by paragraph comment on others’ content designed to spur discussion.
This feature makes the platform highly collaborative. Thus using it comes with a certain amount of risk. When you write something, you should be able to stand it up. Usefully, writers can request feedback and even contributions, prior to publication, this collaborative method of content creation is unique to large-scale social media and is potentially powerful – the crowdsourcing possibilities alone are very exciting.
Useful for brands?
Journalists are beginning to use Medium. Mother Jones was one the first news organisations to jump aboard and Medium is even paying writers to use its platform. Publishers such as Oxford University Press use the Medium to post book extracts. NGOs have been using Medium as a citizen journalism tool in recent weeks to cover, via both primary and secondary sources, the protests in Turkey. There’s even a Collection on the topic: Occupy-Gezi.
If Medium answers your eligibility criteria for participating in a new digital platform, you should investigate further. Other than signing yourself, brand or client up on the waiting list, the quickest way to gain access to Medium is by commenting on others’ writing.
My article was originally published on PRWeek.com.
