Product Overview of Medium
What is Medium?
Medium is an American online publishing platform designed for 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. The platform is owned by A Medium Corporation and serves as a hub for social journalism, hosting a diverse mix of amateur and professional writers and publications.
Key Features and Functionality
Publishing and Content Creation
Medium provides a user-friendly interface for writers to create and publish content. The platform offers a full WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, allowing users to format their text with various options such as bold, italics, hyperlinks, and drop caps. Users can also add images, videos, and embeds by simply copying and pasting URLs, making media integration seamless.
User Interaction and Engagement
Readers can engage with content in several ways:
- Recommendations and Claps: Users can recommend stories, and since August 2017, they can also use the “clap” feature to show their appreciation, with multiple claps possible. This feature influences the payment to authors based on the number of claps received.
- Highlighting and Responses: Readers can highlight specific sections of text, which allows them to add a green highlight visible to their followers, write a response to the story, create a “Text Shot” to share on Twitter, or leave a private note.
- Bookmarking and Sharing: Users can bookmark stories to save them for later reading and share them via various social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
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. Members can also listen to stories, a feature not available to non-members.
Discoverability and Promotion
Stories that receive significant support are more likely to be featured on Medium’s home page, increasing their visibility. Users can follow their favorite writers and publications, similar to how they might follow accounts on social media platforms.
Publications and Community
Medium allows users to create personal profiles and publications, which can house stories from multiple writers under a single brand. This feature enables the creation of community-driven content hubs focused on specific topics or themes.
Technical Infrastructure
Medium’s backend includes a feature store that powers its recommendations system using machine learning models. This feature store manages various types of data, including relational features that handle cross-entity relations, and is being enhanced with new list feature types to improve efficiency and scalability.
Mission and User Base
Medium’s mission is to “deepen readers’ understanding of the world and to empower writers to share their best work and biggest ideas.” The platform reaches around 80 million readers every month and is committed to connecting expert writers with thoughtful readers, elevating diverse and passionate voices.
In summary, Medium is a robust publishing platform that combines ease of content creation, engaging reader interactions, and a supportive community, making it an ideal space for writers to share their ideas and connect with a large and diverse audience.