Medium — a kid losing his digital direction

2014 — it’s a very busy year for me, but very productive.

I am managing 5 creative projects in Toronto, Canada. I am very happy to be productive.

Unfortunately, I could not have enough time to look after my Medium account. In 2014, I could not be one of the best contributors here. My apology to all writers who wants to write for me.

The idea of Medium is totally different from what it used to be. I have a mixed feeling about it. On the one hand, I am happy to see many improvements. Some of the new ideas are, perhaps, coming from my annoying feedback. On the other hand, I am sad to see the new direction. The new direction on Medium makes new users more difficult to promote their writings.

Unless you are a well-known person on tech industry (e.g. @chrismessina published Thought on Google+ in November 2014) or top social media experts, etc. Otherwise, you will not promote your writings easily.

What is the point of using Medium now?

Writers can create blogs on Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr to market themselves easier than on Medium. Writers still have the right to own their writing when they publish their writings their website.

What is the point to have another Wordpress, Blogger, or a publishing social media platform, yet it is not easy for people to use?

On the other hand, it seems like Medium wants to target on the writers who rarely publish anything but only publish one or few important articles.

That might be a good idea. However, how many are these writers in the market? Not too many.

In 2014, INC, US government, and many small business owners contacted me regarding writing on Medium. All of them asked me how to put their articles in one of my Medium collections, but 90% of them gave up because Medium was too complicated and difficult for them.

I can see why this happened.

Majority of people are losing interested in using Medium. It causes the loss of business opportunities.

People gave up Medium because it’s not easy to use anymore.

Developing a new product is to improve the world. One of the crucial points to make a new product successful is to make it easy to use. Unfortunately, I don’t see this on Medium, so far.

As an entrepreneur in IT and digital industry, I see Medium as a confusing kid who is looking for a correct path in the chaos.

However, I believe in Ev Williams (@ev). He is one of the very few smart entrepreneur who changed the digital world few times. I believe he can use Medium to change the world again in the future.