Bits of disconnected genius

My first few days of using Medium were confusing. I had no clue where to start and there were some concepts like “collections” and “recommend” that had no context.

Worse though is the bigger picture. What exactly is this thing and how is it going to transform my reading and writing experience online?

I’m an older dog so this new trick would require some perseverance. Over the next few days of using it I started to see bits of genius. At first I thought Medium was a glorified cross between Twitter and Pinterest, but then I started to see how things connect together.

This is how I see things:

A collection is absolutely the equivalent of a blog. Whom ever owns the collection controls content and publishing rights. It also gets a vanity URL which will come in handy as people start to build audience.

Reputation is important. Receiving recommendations will promote your content which will build viewers to your collection. You can also choose to submit your content to other people’s collections which expands exposure. This crossposting lets you “guest blog” on more popular collections and use those to build your audience.

Unanswered questions

1. How does one promote their content outside of Medium? This is the part I’m struggling with. I’d like to see domain mapping for collections. I should be able to point my personal domain to my collection.

2. How does one track performance? If I write something great, I should be able to track its performance within Medium. Preferably I’d like to connect my Google Analytics account to my Collection.

3. Does cross-posting to multiple collections hurt ranking in Google Search? Isn’t this duplicate content going to drag down performance?

Conclusion

I love the direction that you folks are headed and I think there is a ton of potential here. Writing on Medium is a pleasure with its attention to details, great visual design and simplicity. I think there are some challenges as it grows more popular and I’m interested to see where you take it.