“BuzzFeed is a venture-backed, metrics-optimized ying built for Facebook’s venture-backed, metrics-optimized yang.”
“Topic triumphs over author. Medium doesn’t want you to read something because of who wrote it; Medium wants you to read something because of what it’s about. And because of the implicit promise that Medium = quality.”
“Okay, so, this is totally different now! With New Medium, a post doesn’t need to exist inside a publication-which-is-the-thing-that-used-to-be-called-a-collection. It can exist under your byline alone. That you’re the author is the organizing fact.”
“But you can only flirt with being a platform for so long before you just become one. The description of Medium that’s most stuck with me is from Josh Benton again, this time on Twitter: Medium is now “YouTube for prose,” he said. In other words, it’s a platform. And I think with these product changes, it’s embracing that. It feels like a social network now.”
“maybe Medium is so vast and deep that you can look into its white fathomlessness and see anything you want, see every color at once, when there’s really nothing there at all.”