Trying out Medium
I'm always trying out new blogging and social platforms to see if they're worth using, especially for photographers. Lately, the one that is getting the most attention seems to be Medium, and so I thought I would try it out too. I wanted to try it both for myself, and for an experiment to see how it would work as a photo blogging platform. so I could write about it for my fellow photographers.
To properly evaluate it, I set up a publication on the platform, and I've tried putting a few stories on it. The publication is called "Designtography Magazine". The idea is for it to be a collection of essays on photography and design. It will focus on more long form, editorial type articles. I wanted to have something that combines both of my passions, and I already had the domain, so it seemed like a natural fit. For the moment, much of the content is re-published from this blog. I will start writing some dedicated content for it soon though.
As well as the publication, you can also just follow me on Medium. I'll be publishing some content just as me too, so if you're a member please follow me!
Medium is an interesting platform. It combines aspects of both a good blogging platform, and a social network. The interface is really simple too, although, you don't have great control over things like the layout of the page. It's really simple to use though, and it's really focussed on your text and content.
There are some big pros to the platform. For a start, it's entirely hosted, so you don't need to worry about hosting it yourself. Also, content you publish on medium is available to all medium users, so it's kind of like a giant magazine. Members can also follow you and you'll get updates when someone you follow publishes an article. It'a also really easy to use, and supports markdown.
It's designed primarily for text based content, but it works reasonably well for photography too, depending on what type of stories you want to write. If you're writing a photo essay, then it will work well. If you want to post slideshows or galleries of images, then it's probably not ideal. It's not great for a photographers' own website for example, but would work well for photography related magazines or newsletters.
I'm just starting with Medium, so I'll probably have a more formed opinion after I've been using it for a few months, but for now, I'm pretty happy with it, at least for the way I'm using it. l write some more about it in the future, once I've been using it for a while, but in the mean time, if you want to follow me, my medium profile is here, and please follow Designtograhy too.
