Medium’s Growing Up
I love Medium. I am sure most of you do too. The beauty, breath and depth of content amazes me daily. Literally, daily. 💙
( That being said, it does add to my information overload. I guess, too much of anything is really not good. While working on this piece, I refreshed the home page on Medium and bookmarked four great articles for reading them later. Its an addiction.) 😜
Kudos to Ev Williams and Medium Staff for turning this product into such a beautiful part of my daily life. Medium has occupied the highly coveted real estate on my homescreen of iPhone and iPad for such a long time now. 🙌🏻👏🏽
Last year, Ev Williams made a post about how Medium has transitioned from a tool to a platform/network. I am all for platforms. It’s amazing. 💯
Lately, I have been thinking about a behavior that is becoming more and more prominent on Medium. Users have started becoming curators. This is not to say that it is a bad thing. I think it goes to show how users are engaging with this platform and devising new use cases for it. 🤔
I don’t think it was intended for Medium to become a curation tool. Yes, your feed gets curated based on recommendations made by people you follow. But, that is something that happens algorithmically and something that the team at medium has configured.
I am talking about curation by the users themselves. There are SO many great pieces of content that I would have never read if it wasn’t for the people that I follow and that have become curators for no direct, inherent incentive. 👍
Just this morning, I came across this phenomenal piece where Stephanie Engle curated so many amazing articles both on and off Medium that I would have missed out on. Her curation made me more informed about the growing issue of gender inequality in VR and AR and the design nuances associated with that. That one piece broadened my horizons and helped me become more observant of things around me. 😅
One of my personal favorites in curated articles on Medium is the one by Ina Herlihy.
There is just something so special about human-curated content. Yes, its not scalable. And, algorithms make it much more efficient. But, it isn't always about costs, time and the like. It’s often times about the human touch. At least for me.
I think the fact that so many people are taking the time out to write pieces wherein they link several amazing reads is a big win for Medium. 😉 Users are owning this platform and defining new ways of increasing its value not only for themselves but for others and the Medium community. I think thats wonderful. 🤗
P.S — I believe its the collective human touch that has been making Nuzzel one of my favorite apps.
Some other articles I have written lately —
