Medium’s previewing now with its concept of curated and user voted content collections.
From a product point of view, it sounds compelling. You (currently anyone Evan likes) publish to a collection (theme or topic) and choose a layout style that’s best suited to the content you’re sharing. The community (currently anyone who wants to sign in via Twitter) may then vote up articles within each collection.
Evan Williams, on publishing content to Medium:
We believe that good design supports the purpose (not just the appeal) of content, so Medium is diverse in look and feel—ranging from different types of articles to images to, eventually, much more.
Dave Winer is, of course, worried about the platform:
Please let Medium be something more than another high-walled silo for capturing people’s writing. … Do this one project without regard for capturing content.
But, I have to wonder, when you’re designing and building a new product on a new platform, how much of a distraction is it to consider building an open platform when you’re still trying to figure out your product.
Unlike App.net, where the product is the platform, Medium is trying to redefine publishing, not platform access.
As Evan says:
We haven’t tied everything in Medium together yet, partly because we expect our ideas to evolve rapidly as we experiment and learn from usage.
I suppose it doesn’t seem too much different than Squidoo, where you create a collection of the things you know and love, but the curatorial process and attention to content detail will hopefully help great content rise to the surface.
That, of course, assuming it’s not a circle jerk of like-minded people fulfilling their own expectations by voting up articles that all share the same lens into whatever topic is being discussed.
And, hey, congrats to our friends at Teehan+Lax who were part of the design team.