Of all of the various blogging and/or digital publishing platforms that are available, the one that has intrigued me the most has been Medium.
Last night, I received an invite (though I’ve yet to write my first post), but there are already points of tension that I feel when it comes to writing on Medium.
Before I actually get into that, I actually really dig what they are doing with comments, authenticating with Twitter (one less login!), collections, and so on.
But here’s the thing: I feel as if the service looks so good that it invites only the best content that I – or anyone – can write before actually hitting publish.
There’s a lot wrapped up in that.
Writing on Medium
First, and perhaps the most ironic thing about this entire post, is that I’ve yet to actually write anything on Medium just yet.
Sure, like many, I’ve explored, poked around, read other articles, and so on – but I’ve yet to hit the publish button.
There are several reasons for that.
1. It Invites The Best Content
When it comes to building products and services for others, designers, developers, and anyone else who has a hand in building said product or service could only hope that their work is so good looking that it invites only the best from its users.
I believe Medium does that.
Let’s put it another way: If I’m going to write a post on Medium, I don’t want to let Medium down (“It’s not you, it’s me.”).
It sounds silly, I know, but it’s true – there’s this feeling that it invites only the best of the best and knowing that others feel the same way only increases that feeling even more.
2. Content Ownership
This word has become such a buzzword around the Internet that I’m not even sure everyone has the same definition of it. But when it comes to my writing, I’m selfish – I want to write the best content for great service, but why would I not want that content on my blog?
Is Medium making my personal blog a second rate citizen in my own world?
Okay, so I’m speaking in a bit of hyperbole but there’s still some truth to it: I want to make sure that whatever I publish is the best of the best, but I have to recognize that I’m ultimately sacrificing something by leaving it on another service.
Oh, and as far as owning the content is concerned – that is, the literally words, sentences, and images – I’ll just keep that stuff in a Markdown file in Dropbox or something. Backing up your published stuff isn’t as big a deal people make it out to be :).
3. It’s One More Thing
Finally, for those of us who try to make sure that we streamline our workflow and the work that we do, including yet-another-service is adding something else to the mix that demands our attention.
But when it comes to services such as Medium, we ask to be invited, so I feel that we lose the right to complain about having another obligation or the feeling or a burden of responsibility to contribute.
So What’s To Be Done?
At this point, I have every intention on writing on Medium, linking to the posts from here, and simply exploring another publishing system.
It never hurts to see how others are innovating. I think that we can learn best when we break out of the day-to-day routine that we so obviously expect each time we sit down to work (be it writing, coding, designing, etc, etc, etc.). Not only is it refreshing, but it can help us bring something new back to our own work.
But I digress on that. I’m looking for to writing on Medium. I just need to figure out exactly what it is I want to write.
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