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This topic comes up fairly often. I think about it a lot - as a Medium user and as a person who has managed multiple wordpress blogs. ##Here's my thoughts on w

This topic comes up fairly often. I think about it a lot - as a Medium user and as a person who has managed multiple wordpress blogs. ##Here's my thoughts on why Medium is so popular: 1. It's easy. We are all techies here. We often underestimate the weight of this. 2. It looks better than your average blog theme. (With 0 effort) 3. It promises the opportunity to access a larger audience. (Even if it does not deliver on that promise) 4. It provides an endorphin rush though likes/claps and the analytics/view counts. ##What the average blogger doesn't care about: 1. Effort Overhead. Managing a web server, buying a domain, configuring a wordpress blog, updating wordpress, choosing a theme, deleting spam comments etc. 2. Content ownership. Most people don't think about it that much. 3. RSS feeds. I'm willing to bet >80% of bloggers have no idea that people still use RSS (or even what it is at this stage) ------ I don't think Medium is perfect, but I also don't think any of the alternatives are good enough either.

TheRealPomax 8y ago
A small note on that very last one: RSS falls in the "you probably don't know about this, so let us tell you that you can reach more people with it" category. Any platform that doesn't offer it, or offers it "tucked away" is doing so intentionally, to keep traffic siloed, and keeping the posts from reaching external audiences. Not knowing what RSS is as a user is completely fine, and really:to be expected. But that's true for all technology: pick any tech you value and the majority of the world won't be familiar with it (case in point: I didn't know hackernews existed until my stuff got posted to it and people started yelling at me about it) so it's not a matter of "do people know about it" but "should there be a reasonable expectation that people are told about it when they start doing a thing that would greatly benefit from it". Not offering RSS, when you're an online syndication platform, is a pretty clear sign that Medium made Medium to serve Medium first. Not to be the best experiences for readers and writers of blog posts and long reads. Which includes not informing people about things they could have had if Medium was a little less self-serving and actually cared about getting people's voices heard out there.

TheRealPomax 8y ago

A small note on that very last one: RSS falls in the "you probably don't know about this, so let us tell you that you can reach more people with it" category. Any platform that doesn't offer it, or offers it "tucked away" is doing so intentionally, to keep traffic siloed, and keeping the posts from reaching external audiences. Not knowing what RSS is as a user is completely fine, and really:to be expected. But that's true for all technology: pick any tech you value and the majority of the world won't be familiar with it (case in point: I didn't know hackernews existed until my stuff got posted to it and people started yelling at me about it) so it's not a matter of "do people know about it" but "should there be a reasonable expectation that people are told about it when they start doing a thing that would greatly benefit from it". Not offering RSS, when you're an online syndication platform, is a pretty clear sign that Medium made Medium to serve Medium first. Not to be the best experiences for readers and writers of blog posts and long reads. Which includes not informing people about things they could have had if Medium was a little less self-serving and actually cared about getting people's voices heard out there.