Product Overview of Medium
Medium is an American online publishing platform designed for sharing written content, such as articles, blogs, and stories. Developed by Evan Williams, who also co-founded Blogger and Twitter, Medium was launched in August 2012.
What Medium Does
Medium serves as a social journalism platform, hosting a diverse array of stories, ideas, and perspectives from both amateur and professional writers and publications. It provides an open environment where users can publish and share their original ideas and viewpoints with a global audience.
Key Features and Functionality
User Interface and Editing
Medium offers a user-friendly, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that allows writers to focus on their content creation without worrying about complex formatting. The platform handles the formatting, ensuring that stories are readable across various devices.
Content Sharing and Engagement
Users can share and comment on content easily. Posts can be recommended and shared by other users, similar to Twitter. Additionally, Medium introduced a “clap” feature in August 2017, which allows readers to show their appreciation for articles by clicking multiple times, influencing the payment to authors based on the number of claps received.
Membership and Exclusive Content
Medium offers a membership program for $5 per month or $50 per year. Members gain access to exclusive content, audio narrations of popular stories, and an improved bookmark section.
SEO and Story Options
The platform provides basic SEO tools, including customizable story descriptions and URLs, to help writers reach a wider audience. Writers can also choose to write single stories or series of stories, keeping their audience engaged and anticipating follow-up pieces.
Change Tracking
Medium includes a change tracker that helps writers and editors keep track of revisions, ensuring that changes are easily identifiable and manageable even after multiple edits.
Monetization
Medium allows writers to earn money through their writing. Paid members contribute part of their membership fees to authors based on the engagement their articles receive, such as through the “clap” feature.
Platform Integration
Users can create accounts using Facebook, Google, or an email address, making it easy to sign up and start publishing. The platform is accessible on a range of devices due to its lean and simple layout.
Additional Capabilities
Feature Store and Recommendations: Medium’s feature store powers its recommendations system by storing and managing features used by machine learning models. This includes handling relational features and introducing new list feature types to enhance efficiency and scalability.
In summary, Medium is a robust publishing platform that combines ease of use, engagement features, and monetization options, making it an attractive space for writers and readers alike to share and discover a wide range of content.