My first month on Medium.. a review
Its been a month now since I migrated to Medium, after years of writing on Blogger. I can already sense a major difference here and to sum it up: It now feels like I’ve been given an axe to fell a tree, while all along I’ve been used to mini-tools, much like the Swiss knife, to work my way through the trunk.
There were several things to take care of before I could hit the ‘Publish’ button on Blogger. While its good to be resourceful and learn working with handy tools once in a while, it exhausts you to keep doing this regularly. Medium is better in many ways. I’ve read many a glowing review of Medium when I was contemplating this move last year, so here’s my own take:
1. ‘Just right’ UI
Medium offers the closest to what one could imagine of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYS-I-WYG) User Interface. Whether its the elegant layout, or beautiful typography, or pertinent formatting styles, in totality it makes up for an engaging user experience. Both, to write and read.
2. Less makes More
This is a case in point on how limitations could drive effectiveness, and simplify life by cutting out the mental load, while writing. There is just 1 font, only 1 color and just 1 layout. I’ve spent hours on Blogger creating and editing custom-HTML image grids, whereas here you can add just 1 image at a time. Nothing more and no fancy alternatives. But its somehow liberating.
3. Talk across Channels
While on Blogger, I used to manually repost on Twitter, but the reader base was dwindling nevertheless. Medium lets you share directly on Facebook and Twitter (but, no LinkedIn yet), and undoubtedly has a better reader base. I’ve found Facebook to top in my list of referral sources, so far.
4. Thriving reader base
I believe that a bigger audience can have positive influence on one’s writing. Akin to how a public speaker delivers better oratories in front of an audience, than during the rehearsals. Readership, conversation & feedback loops do help write better, and makes you look forward to the next outing.
5. Stats — the good and bad
Medium stats provide a useful, novel metric of ‘Read%’, which indicates how many people actually read your post, after having been convinced to click. This apart, there is a sprinkling of few other basic metrics in the stats page. However, this is one area where I’m slightly grumbling, so far. Not sure if its to do with just my thirst for more data and analysis-paralysis, but I consider this a limitation. Atleast, a data download option could have partially solved for it.
In summary, its been a good migration onto Medium and I’m working on sustaining the visible, initial enthusiasm.
