Medium is the Message

The online world is dominated by social platforms and social platforms are dominated by ego. But what do you get when you have millions (or billions) of egos vying for followers, friends, and likes? Well… things get ugly, like the cacophony of Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, we love Facebook, but it’s about following people or businesses (egos) more than the transmission of content. In the din of social media, how do we elevate the content and abandon the ego?

Evan Williams and Biz Stone, founders of Twitter, are developing a new publishing platform called Medium. This nascent social tool is still in the works, and it may be some time before it goes public, because the founders are figuring out how to do something that’s never been done—make social media more about media than social. In their words, they’re “re-imagining publishing in an attempt to make an evolutionary leap.”

Medium is being designed to be a platform that focuses on the quality of content rather than the path of content. It’s about what, not who. Users will be able to publish media—and no one kind of media is placed above another, so pictures, video, and text are on even footing—into collections. The collection then becomes a system regulated by quality, as users will be able to vote content up with something similar to Facebook’s “like” or Google’s “+1.” Since the collection is made up of content added by multiple users, it stands apart from them as a collaborative work that celebrates the media and not the author.

Medium is intended to be enjoyable for publishers as well as spectators. Unlike having a barren Facebook page, you can be valued as part of the community of Medium by contributing your opinion even if you don’t contribute content.

Browsing what’s currently available on Medium sparks memories of Pinterest and Tumblr. I don’t think Medium is trying to shy away from these associations. To build the next big thing, you use what’s worked and make it better.

The current state of social media has given everyone a voice, and Medium is saying that it’s time for those voices to transcend the ego and stand on their merit. Mind you, this is a goal born of an idealistic philosophy of what the web should be. Often, such lofty goals find themselves thwarted by that gulf between idealism and reality. Maybe people want to revel in ego, collecting followers and fans, rather than invest in the elevation of product over producer.

Medium’s success or failure could tell us a lot about ourselves.