Ugh, I Like The New Medium Profiles

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

It’s been a few weeks now since Medium made the shift to the new profile set-up.

When it first looked like it was going to happen I was skeptical.

I’m loathe to change most of the time. Doesn’t matter what, I am a man of routine. So I’m usually wary when the powers at be at Medium tinker with the platform.

Some changes are rather benign, like when they add new topics or change tiny parts of the site that few notice. Other times the changes are quite large, like when they re-structured how they paid writers through the Partner Program a year ago.

And so I’ve been nervous each time something new comes across my desk.

At first, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really like the idea of changing the profiles. I was fine with the way things were and I think what really made me do a double take was that I did not like the blog set-up for publications. It stripped the magazine feel from them and left it in a single scrolling mess.

And so when I saw the profiles going the same way, I wanted no part of it. Mostly as a knee jerk reflex from not liking change, and not liking that layout for my publication.

But it changed. To be fair, it really didn’t matter. I don’t think that many people went to my old profile to begin with so the change was nothing to worry about.

But I must say that despite my apprehension, I like the new profiles.

I like them a lot.

Actually, I feel silly for not wanting to change. For a couple reasons.

1. It gives me a place to self-publish

I self publish a lot of stories rather than send them to bigger publications. I could bore you by saying that I have some higher reason to keep it all under one banner, like I want to build my own brand or some lame answer like that.

Truth is that I’m impatient. I don’t like waiting days or weeks for an editor to okay my stuff. So I like have a steady stream of my own writing under just my profile.

The problem was before the pieces were pretty free range. I tried to mitigate this by starting a publication to house my non fiction writing but it ever felt quite right.