The Journey from Feature to Product: Lessons from Medium's Highlights

The Journey from Feature to Product: Lessons from Medium's Highlights

Introduction:
Many companies start their journey somewhere between being a mere feature and a fully-fledged product. However, the path towards becoming a successful company relies not only on the breadth of the product being built but also on the size of the opportunity and the universality of the solution within the market. This article will explore the significance of this journey and draw insights from Medium's Highlights feature, which played a pivotal role in changing the publishing landscape forever.

Medium's Highlights: From Failure to Validation:
For Nick and the product team at Medium, the failure of their initial launch was the ultimate validation of the Highlights feature they had been steadily improving since its inception. Highlights quickly gained popularity among readers and writers, attracting a devoted user base and inspiring numerous copycat companies. The team recognized that vanity metrics like views or clicks were not enough in an environment where depth of engagement mattered more than reaching a larger audience. Thus, Highlights became a tool not only for easy sharing but also for transforming Medium into a leading online publishing platform.

Understanding User Experience:
To enhance the user experience, Medium's product team drew inspiration from features like Notes and Recommend Notes. They analyzed how people utilized these features and how they could be utilized in unintended ways. However, they had not anticipated the challenges faced by users who did not follow anyone on Medium or those who followed many others. Without surfacing relevant Highlights, the former group would not find value in the feature, while the latter group would be overwhelmed by excessive highlights. The team realized that for readers, highlighting made the reading experience more social, allowing them to engage with the content in various ways.

The Value of Highlights:
Highlighting holds different meanings for different users, including enjoying a quote, resonating with an insight, sharing on other platforms, capturing ideas for later, or expressing disagreement through comments. From a writer's perspective, feedback is invaluable. Highlights provide Medium authors with direct feedback from their audience, helping them identify the most engaging parts of their posts. This engagement attracts the best writers, leading to higher readership and financial rewards for quality content.

Actionable Advice:

1. Rethink Your Metrics: Vanity metrics may not accurately measure engagement and value. Identify one metric that truly reflects the value users derive from your product and prioritize features based on its impact.
2. Foster Engagement: Prioritize features that encourage users to engage more deeply with your product. Increased engagement leads to higher user retention and sustainable growth.
3. Embrace User Feedback: Real user feedback, both internal and external, is invaluable for product improvement. Actively seek feedback and make necessary adjustments based on learnings.

Conclusion:
Medium's journey from a feature to a product and, ultimately, a successful company highlights the importance of understanding user needs, fostering engagement, and embracing user feedback. By prioritizing features that add value and measuring the right metrics, companies can build products that resonate with users and drive sustainable growth. The story of Medium's Highlights serves as a valuable case study for companies aspiring to navigate the feature-product-company continuum.