Even for social media addicts it is hard to keep up with the huge number of social networks out there. If you opened an account with each one you would probably be a square-eyed, drooling mess. On the other hand, whether you are using social networks for business or pleasure, you don’t want to get left behind either. Last week, Twitter founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone launched the beta version of Medium, a platform for collaborative publication of content on any chosen topic. This may sound similar to a number of other platforms; so what makes it different? And is it worth the hype?
How Medium works
Pages on Medium, called ‘collections’, are themed posts of pictures or writing which appear in grid format. You can create your own collection or contribute to an existing collection. Users can promote posts they think are most interesting with the ‘this is good’ button.
At the moment only a select group of people are able to contribute, although once the site launches fully, anyone with a Twitter account will be able to take part.
The Wonder Years comes to social media
A crowded environment?
Comparisons have been drawn between Medium and several other similar platforms…
- Tumblr offers a publishing platform on a similar basis, allowing users to write content longer than a tweet but shorter than a blog post
- Pinterest allows a similar experience, though entirely picture oriented. Both Pinterest and Tumblr allow users to rate posts so that the most popular content is more visible too
- Squidoo, created by marketing guru Seth Godin, which allows users to create a page called a ‘lens’. Using their lens, users share expertise on a single topic or issue with a wide community. You can update a lens regularly, although lenses are commonly articles or groups of articles on a subject, so don’t warrant frequent updates like diaries or blogs
- Scoop.it and other content curation platforms allow you to gather content from various web sources and collate them on one page, though they aren’t intended as places to write and publish original content
- Wikipedia is perhaps the King of them all. But Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, so you wouldn’t publish content of an entirely non-academic nature
What does the launch of Medium say about the evolution of social media?
One of the most interesting aspects of Medium is the link to Twitter. Users must login via Twitter, which means that the huge, worldwide audience of Twitter users will go some way to guaranteeing the success of Medium. The creators also have a proven track record in launching similar platforms successfully, such as Blogger, which was launched in 1999 and enabled anyone to create a free blog.
Regardless of the already captive audience, the concept is well judged, even to the point of the platform name. The name Medium suggests that the platform is the medium of the future, but could equally reflect that the platform is a genuine happy medium or balance of everything social media has to offer.
If we speculate that Medium will be a success, does this mean that blogs will become less influential? It’s a difficult question to answer, but there are people who think the golden age of the blogger has been and gone, and that we are now in the age of ‘influencers’. The success of Twitter has meant that more people access content via their tweetstream, rather than accessing content by following a specific blog, perhaps through an RSS feed. This means that successful bloggers are more likely to be effective Twitter users too.
Many of the principles of blogs and Medium are similar, but perhaps the most significant observation is that Medium and social media generally are becoming increasingly collaborative. Greater emphasis seems to be on cooperative publishing between groups of people, and less so on individual bloggers. So while a successful marketing campaign might reasonably target a specific blogger, Medium means that you are better off speaking to, and contributing to an entire community. This might be stating the obvious, and it is easy to say that collaboration is the buzzword of the moment. But how this actually plays out and starts to affect online relationships, particularly those between brands and individuals is yet to be seen. With that in mind, this old-fashioned blogger will be signing up for a Medium account as soon as he can!
