How Highlights on Medium Changed Publishing Forever: Improving Engagement and Building Better Writers

How Highlights on Medium Changed Publishing Forever: Improving Engagement and Building Better Writers

Introduction

Medium, the popular blogging platform, revolutionized the publishing industry with its unique features and focus on engagement. One of the platform's standout features is Highlights, which allows readers to mark and share specific parts of an article. This feature not only enhances the reading experience but also provides valuable feedback to authors. In this article, we will explore how Highlights changed publishing forever, improved engagement, and helped writers become better at their craft.

Medium's Goal: Measuring Value in a Stream-of-Consciousness Environment

Medium set out to be a platform that caters to both stream-of-consciousness conversation and long-form writing. However, this posed a challenge when it came to measuring value. Traditional vanity metrics like views or clicks didn't accurately reflect the depth and engagement that Medium aimed to foster. Instead, Medium focused on a single key performance indicator (KPI): Total Time Reading (TTR). TTR measures how long visitors spend reading, ensuring that the platform delivers true value to its users.

Highlights: Making Reading More Engaging

When Highlights was introduced in 2015, it gave readers a more granular way to engage with content. Instead of just scanning the top points, readers could now highlight passages that resonated with them. This increased attention and focus on the content, allowing readers to truly make the article their own. Each time a passage is highlighted, the author receives a notification, providing valuable insights into what parts of their article are popular.

Improving Highlights: Adding Depth to the Reading Experience

After the initial launch, Medium continued to enhance the Highlights feature. Users could now mark phrases, sentences, or paragraphs and treat each Highlight as an independent article. This allowed readers to add comments, reply to other comments, or share the Highlight directly on Twitter. Medium's product team analyzed user behavior and feedback to make sure the right number of Highlights were surfaced per post, giving priority to those from friends or popular ones.

Highlights: Benefits for Writers and Readers

Highlights not only benefit readers but also help authors become better writers. Feedback is crucial for writers to understand what resonates with their audience and what needs improvement. Highlights provide Medium authors with direct feedback from their audience, allowing them to pinpoint the most engaging parts of their posts. This knowledge helps them write more engaging content and build a larger audience on Medium.

Lesson 1: Engagement Drives Retention and Growth

Medium's focus on engagement, as measured by Total Time Reading (TTR), is a valuable lesson for any product or platform. Vanity metrics might give a false sense of success, but true value lies in creating a product that users find engaging enough to return to repeatedly. By identifying a key metric that truly measures engagement, companies can drive retention and ultimately achieve growth.

Lesson 2: Start Small and Iterate

Medium's approach to developing Highlights demonstrates the importance of starting small and iterating based on user feedback. By launching the feature with the ability to mark phrases, sentences, or paragraphs, Medium allowed users to engage with the content in a meaningful way. Over time, they added features like comments and improved the visual design to enhance the user experience. Starting small and iterating allows for continuous improvement and avoids overwhelming users with unnecessary complexity.

Lesson 3: Embrace User Diversity

Medium's product team recognized that not everyone uses the product in the same way. By analyzing user behavior and understanding how different users interact with features, they were able to optimize the Highlights experience. This lesson applies to any product or platform: don't assume that all users will have the same needs or preferences. Embrace user diversity and tailor the experience to accommodate different usage patterns.

Conclusion

Medium's Highlights feature has profoundly changed the publishing landscape by improving engagement and providing valuable feedback to writers. By focusing on a single KPI, Total Time Reading (TTR), Medium has ensured that their product delivers true value to users. The lessons learned from Medium's approach to Highlights, such as prioritizing engagement, iterating based on user feedback, and embracing user diversity, can be applied to any product or platform seeking to improve user experience and drive growth.