You are tired. Very tired. It’s okay, you’re not alone.
The constant hum of someone else’s digital success grows tiresome, as does the view (from behind the rope) of the money geysers of Silicon Valley, Alley, Prairie and Forest, etc.
That’s why men and women or reason–sometimes found toiling away in editorial offices–come up with new terms like YAP. Yet Another Platform. And that’s why they write things like this:
It may sound reductionist, but advertising, no matter your personal feelings about it, is vital for a publisher. Show me a publisher who can survive without any form of advertising and I’ll show you a cat riding atop a unicorn through a rainbow.
The new platform “people” are talking about today is Medium, a so-called “cross between Tumblr and Pinterest” from Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Like these dudes need a new platform…
Posting on Medium (not yet open to everyone) is elegant and easy, and you can do so without the burden of becoming a blogger or worrying about developing an audience.
Ah yes, the burden of becoming or remaining a blogger. I could wax unpoetic on that for awhile, but I will refrain, and like the good blogger that I am, point you instead to Joshua Benton’s look at Medium. Benton is director of the Nieman Journalism Lab.
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.
In other words, the YAP du jour is yet another radical stripping away of the archetypes we’ve grown up with. Who needs authors when you’ve got topics?
