Medium Rare

I love Medium, the product. I wish I had the opportunity to invest. When Greylock became their first institutional investor, I knew Medium would be a billion dollar exit and wrote about it here. Since then, other great investors and firms have backed up their trucks to ride the Ev train, and that’s a smart move.

Online, it is easy to see blogs migrate, flock, gravitate to Medium. It is a phenomenal product. I can say that because I live inside WordPress, which I’ve come to learn (and like) over time. It can be frustrating, too – oh yes, very frustrating. That’s why Medium is doing so well. There’s little need now for WordPress for people who just want to write and post media and discover new content, and they needed some competition.

In terms of people migrating to Medium, I certainly see flocks of investors and tech people taking flight to Medium — or redesigning their blog/site to look like Medium’s. The advantages of going there far outweigh creating an independent blog, especially today. Some holdouts have cited the inability to get their domain, or customize their look, their investment in a commenting system, or an email list they’ve carefully built up, etc. — but Medium is chipping away at those, too. They understand what the holdouts want and are probably building it.

But, I won’t do it. While I have experimented with cross-posting and do some personal writing on Medium, I will not move this blog to Medium.

Maybe I’m holding on to an old habit. Maybe I spent too much time, over the years, designing my site to look and feel a certain way. Maybe I don’t want to feel I’m joining the ranks and just following along. Maybe it’s all of the above.

But, if I sit down and drill into why I won’t do it, it comes down to identity.

I don’t have an office for work. I don’t have staff. This site has evolved since summer 2012, like I have, and I’ve been able to slowly mold it to the things that I increasingly care about. Maybe, as droves flock to Medium, my site becomes more unique. I am sure I’m placing more weight on this than needs to be, yet I still feel as if going to Medium will feel like “changing offices,” or “acquiring a staff to manage” or, most frighteningly, will start to chip away at the little bit of individuality I hold in what is otherwise a competitive, overcrowded, monochrome investment world.