Disrupting Medium: I’m with Ev

4 min readMay 31, 2017

Last Friday, the same thing happened — except instead of receiving two lengthy emails from Medium I received the three emails. The first message had dozens of links and texts and was some weekly digest thing. The second message was very long and discussed the new audio service. I had also received a very detailed email on the very same audio app topic the day before. The third email was short and just contained the a copy of statistics that I can see if I go to Medium site.

Hello! I receive just about everything I need from Medium by going to the site or the app. All this other stuff is as useful as spam. I only look at it because I am very interested in Medium and have every hope in the world that Medium survives and flourishes.

Some thoughts on Medium:

I’m with Ev

A recent NY Times article quotes Medium founder, Evan Williams:

For five years, Mr. Williams has been refining a communications platform called Medium. Its ambition: define a new model for media in a world struggling under the weight of fake or worthless content. Medium is supposed to be social and collaborative without rewarding the smash-ups. It is supposed to be a force for good.
“A beautiful space for reading and writing — and little else,” Mr. Williams called Medium at its public debut in 2012. “The words are central.”

I’m with Ev. This is why I write and and this is what I look for when I read.

There are trolls and nasty loath-ish writing. But if writing can be seen to operate within a normal statistical bell-curve of qualities then— at the other end of the bell-curve — there have to be angels and the sublime. And that’s why I’m here.

Writer and Readers

The email messages were sent to me in order to entice me to read more. This is the opposite of my intent or desire with Medium. I use Medium in order to read less. Well curated, well tagged sources means that I browse through many fewer duplicates and make preparing a short list of articles I w ill read fully a much faster easier task.

Do You hear that Medium? I want less from you not more!

Clueless Disruption

Here is what I think is happening. My guess is that many of the peeps at Medium com out of the publishing industry. The publishing industry is all about readership. How many books did you sell? How many subscribers do you have? How many issues were printed? And so on. Publishers seek eyeballs, publishers live by consumers consuming. Publishers are there to help peeps read more.

Being nice to readers is very nice, but it’s not Ev.

Blogger gave you an introduction to writing online. Twitter help millions write more and faster. Both these apps grew because people want to write. People want to write about lots of things in a free and unfettered manner. You might say that Craigslist allowed peeps to sell in a similar manner.

Of course there are readers, And AirBnB has guests. Uber has riders. But what established the possibility the existence of these disruptions were the home-owners, the drivers — and the writers.

So former publishing industry peeps, please get out of the way. Please take all the effort that went into creating that irrelevant audio app along with you. Please find some second hand bookstore, find old-timey stuff to read and stay there.

Writing is right

You are a writer. You want to write clearly and with few errors.

You need proof reading. You need an editor. You need researchers. You need illustrators. You want to collaborate with other writers. You want to be part of per review processes. You want to write without infringing copyrights (or with as the case may be). And I can go on and on with all the things you want and need as a writer. Things you — as a writer — are certainly willing to pay for. A tiny bit if you write for free. Much more if you are making money.

You can monetize with writers. Got that?

BTW, I am right

Look at Apple and Google. Do they talk about how many times their apps have been downloaded. Yes, a bit here and there. But the numbers of apps their developers have created, they shout the numbers far and wide.

GitHub on their about page tells you how many developers they have and how projects they have created. There is no mention of readership or page hits,

The driver of the disruption is the creator of the content not the consumer.

Writing Right Away

Blogger is great, but you have to select a theme, set up plugins, choose colors and fonts and so on. All this before you even write a word. With Twitter it’s quite a bit easier, you set up the background and upload an avatar and not much more, but then you can’t write much.

With Medium you sign up and just start writing as much as you want.

Medium is the write way to go.