![]() My reaction is “who let this on to Medium!” I’d never say that about a YouTube video or a Twitter account or a Blogger site. I’ve also found myself disappointed when I encounter content that’s poorly written or crude or cliche hipster pageview grubbing. I want to attach myself to voices that would have previously gone undiscovered and unrecorded (the 9%), not writers who are effectively freelancing on Medium (the 1%). I feel like I don’t want to get too excited about a writer on the platform who is paid because their content will only continue along with the dollars. Why? Because it does matter to me whether some content is paid or volunteered. When it feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be, it prevents me from emotionally attaching to it. That said, the “contradictions” highlighted earlier create a veneer that leaves the service a bit more amorphous than it otherwise should. While I’m not really in the 9% creators (I do publish occasionally on Medium but find to be more fulfilling), I am in the 100% that enjoy reading Medium. The design is clean and page like – consistent white margins, single column text. The homepage increasingly serves as your personalized table of contents and even as you finish one article, they’ve preloaded the next for you. Collections of thoughtful content based on your interests that is somewhat evergreen (notice their lack of emphasis on publish dates). I don’t think the Medium team has accomplished this yet but that’s the metaphor they hold in their mind. A creative space that’s less complex than a CMS but more geared towards writing original medium-longform content than Tumblr.įor consumers, Medium is a magazine. Succinctly, Medium occupies the space in-between WordPress and Tumblr. Most of the content is not fully original (that’s not to say there isn’t unique content on Tumblr or that the remixing itself isn’t highly creative, more so that if you look at Tumblr in its entirety – not just the popular hipster urls – it’s a lot of YouTube videos, imgur pics, etc. They’re part of a community and the content they create gets pushed and reblogged via Tumblr Dashboard. The masses want to collect, comment and republish other people’s assets. They like feedback (hence comments) but don’t want to get into flame wars. They don’t want to blog daily or necessarily establish an ongoing readership. ![]() They aren’t focused on driving their own traffic (hence promotion). They sometimes need inspiration or to feel like part of something bigger (hence collections). These people want to write but don’t want to maintain a blog (hence the publishing tool and centralized namespace). They construct their own themes and topics to write about, and most of the content is original to them. These folks also are happy to deal with their own content promotion and try to build an audience. There are content creators who want their own dry piece of land, a full featured CMS and total control over their blog. Let me borrow this construct and apply it specifically to web publishing: ![]() There’s an internet rule called 1%-9%-90% which states 1% create, 9% comment/interact/curate, 90% consume. I know, that’s not really clear without explanation. Recently though I’ve settled on how I describe Medium: it’s a magazine created by the 9%. An agnostic platform, but one which heavily promotes showcase content. A technology company, but one which hires editors and agents. A publishing tool, but one which pays some of its contributors. Rather the desire for explanation comes from a series of seeming contradictions that left people trying to define something still evolving in front of them. Evan Williams’ involvement is certainly part of the intrigue but I don’t think fully explains the interest. Namely the media industry, investors, content marketers and professional writers. Not by people who write on Medium, or people who read Medium, but by people who feel like their professions might be impacted by Medium. What is Medium? I get asked this question frequently. ![]()
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