The Blogger Comes Around
Medium’s changes to bring the world back to blogging
As I age, I find myself increasingly aware that most things seem to be cyclical in nature. That is, things change, and then go back, then they change back the other way again. This is both fairly obvious but also extremely hard to see in real time when it seems like things are changing and can’t possibly go back to the way they were. They often do. Maybe not exactly, but directionally.
The opposite of the opposite is where you started.
This is also true in technology. But it’s even harder to see because technological changes are so massive and rapid in relatively short time spans. The Apple Watch we have on our wrists is more powerful than the first smartphone we had in our pocket which was more powerful than the first computer we had on our desk which was more powerful than the first mainframes which took up whole rooms. And so on. But still, at a higher level, things seem to come back around.
I found myself thinking about this while reading Ev Williams’ post yesterday about the latest core changes to Medium — the platform on which this blog is published.¹ As he notes:
With streaming television, most of us watch fewer TV shows than we did on cable, but we watch them much more consistently. Less catching an episode here or there. We’ve seen 100% or zero. At the same time, our reading has gone the opposite way . We read far more outlets, but nearly all of them sporadically. In other words, our reading has gotten more transactional while TV has gotten more relational.
I had never really thought of it this way, but it is interesting that those two worlds have inverted.² And, per above, I would expect things to go back the other way eventually. And that’s clearly what Medium is trying to get ahead of with their most recent changes to the site.
But they’re also not fully ahead of such changes. In a way, I believe this is a part of what has led to the rise in newsletters. It’s a more relational… medium. And yes, they were back in the day too, before they went out of style, before they came back in style!³
This is also, of course, what blogging was back in the day. Something which Ev knows better than anyone as one of the founders of Blogger. Many folks who grew up in that old school era of blogging have long desired for it to come back (myself included). And I think it’s less about the nostalgia factor (though that’s part of it, to be sure), and more about the relational style.
Another form of relational media on the web is blogging — especially in the early days. One of the things I loved about blogging back then — and that people enjoy about writing newsletters today — is the feeling that you’re publishing to a relatively consistent group of people who care what youhave to say. Even if it’s a small group. This lets you write with more freedom and confidence. You build context and trust over time. Your success is less dependent on your latest headline and more on delivering on the trust your readers have given you by showing up. Do so reliably and that readership grows, like a great show (via word of mouth/tweet, or, in the old days, blogrolls).
Medium itself has tried to bring this back in various ways before and it has never quite caught on. But all of these new tools and ideas feel like a far more correct and comprehensive way to bring blogging back.⁴ And just as big of a factor in all of this is timing. Because things naturally come back around.
¹ And the company in which GV, where I’m a partner, is invested, of course.
² Though I’m not actually sure we do watch fewer shows than we did on cable. I, for one, watch more, but I think that has to do with the fact that they’re simply better than they were in the “olden days” of cable. I do think we perhaps watch fewer shows at any given time — less “snacking” as it were, and more gorging. So, the overall point stands.
³ I run one here, which has evolved over the years, though I’m obviously curious in Medium’s new tools for this!
⁴ Custom domains are coming back too! (Though in some cases, they never fully left — such as, here.)
