What's Old is New Again

Two phrases come to mind:

"What's old is new again" and "Everything is cyclical in nature."

I've been working online long enough (almost 20 years) to have seen a lot of things come and go. From the dot com bubble(s) bursting, to web 2 and 3.0, and back again. One thing I am never surprised of is the ability for something new to burst on the scene and become very popular (quickly) doing the same old things we've seen before - only better.

What's caught my eye this month is Medium.com. In this day and age when we are on information overload, who would have predicted that a long form content based service would emerge as the new cool thing? My entire professional IT career has been spent in web browsers, and I have spent countless thousands of hours pounding out blog posts in a strict format of 400 - 1,200 word format for years. I have been crafting "quick read, quick glance" content for so long - I think I forgot what long form actually was. Especially since I really don't read periodicals or books at all. Why should I, the web holds my attention morning, noon, and night. I am a distracted netizen, and nothing much holds my attention for long.

I think that Medium is appealing because it's the anti-web. We are blind now to banners, popups, sliding ads, jiggling graphics, modals, interstitials, and "you won't believe what I just saw..." headlines. Medium has good content, by interesting writers, for smart people. Having said that - anyone can get an account and write what they want. But it's ad-free minimalistic mobile-first approach to content seems to be attracting great content in droves. Try it, you might like it. At least you'll know how much time you'll be spending with each article (before you read it). I, for one, did not believe I would be interested in reading that format of content again.