When Medium started in 2012, the concept was brilliant. The alternative blogging site launched by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone successfully built a community for readers and writers. But, like all good things that start out pure and simple, the muck has started to build.
Initially a by-invitation-only site, Medium later opened up to allow anyone to post just about anything. And it now is used by about 17 million people a month, including President Obama.
On it, you can read gems of inspiring stories, poems, essays, even the State of the Union Address. And it’s a brilliantly executed tool: easy enough to use so writers don’t have to fuss much with formatting and where readers can scroll through and follow content organized by topic rather than author.
And, frankly, it isn’t intimidating: You don’t have to be a writer to post anything; you just have something to say.
So far so good. After all, an online forum for content you would otherwise never know about is a great tool to create connections.
But like the good intentions that started MySpace, with the good, you have to also take the bad. Opening it up to anyone to create content is a great idea, but it means you have to accept the fact that you’ll also get content creeping in that has its own agenda.
As MySpace morphed into a giant content dumpster dive of suggestive and naked selfies and parasitic advertising, Medium’s posts are becoming freckled with content that threatens to become more toxic to the site’s health.
Click baiters
It didn’t take long for capitalism to worm its way onto pages. These authors are the worst because they rob you of something you can’t get back: your time.
They write attention-getting headlines and promise inspirational content (“7 things you should do right now to improve your life”) only to generally sell you on their workshop, their book, their whatever.
They are simply using Medium as their sales platform to drum up interest (and Ben Franklins) in whatever they’re selling.
It’s a free forum for doing so, but please alert me first so I can skip the stuff that winds up in a sales pitch at the end. Mark it “advertising” like traditional media do or, if nothing else, “annoying,” which it is.
It’s all about rankings
Other than the above mentioned, you can’t really make money on Medium. Because you’re basically guest blogging, you give up control of your content so there is no monetization potential there. But that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t practiced.
On Medium, it’s about more than just posting; it’s about getting followers, somebody to like and rank your stuff. That means, if you really want people to read what you’ve written, you have to network, in a way—like and recommend others’ posts, comment, follow them, highlight points in their posts, and hope they do the same for you.
So instead of focusing on writing, authors obsess over rankings.
Maybe I’m old school, but I just like the idea of writing something prophetic and posting it on the site for anyone to read. Not then turning around and having to sell your soul so it can be seen.
Stop with the ‘fucking’ headlines
The shock value of swearing in headlines isn’t lost on me. When I see it, it makes me stop and take a look, like seeing a dog on its hind legs in the supermarket.
It was one thing when it was used once in a while to mirror the vibe of the piece. Problem is, many authors have figured out that it also gets readers’ attention, so they insert a “shit” here, a “fucking” there and throw in an “asshole” for good measure on anything from angry poetry to a piece about buying furniture.
It feels like it’s not necessarily for authenticity, but just to get readers, likes and rankings.
Is there hope?
I still tune in to Medium from time to time; I even link to it from this blog. But much like the rush to MySpace in the early 2000s to its mass exodus after 2009, I’m starting to drift from it.
Sure, you could argue they aren’t making the operational and technological mistakes that befell MySpace. My hope is that the growing sales pitches don’t take over to define Medium as the T & A and cheap ads defined MySpace.
I love the community, just not sure the neighborhood is what it was meant to be.
Word Warrior 