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Me.dium is Ma.rginal
I just read about technically impressive social browsing app Me.dium taking a boatload of funding, courtesy of R/WW. R/WW’s Alex Iskold takes the position that Me.dium is filling the fourth corner in his scope vs. speed/size chart - i.e.: that there are usage scenarios for collabortive browing in both productivity and casual discovery.
From what I understand of Me.dium (I’ll be honest here - I’ve gotten most of my knowledge of it from the RW/W postings), using the app would be akin to doing all of your reading at the bookstore: I’d be in the science fiction section reading whatever, and everyone else in the section would be able to see what I was reading and vice versa - a cluster of people around a particular book could drive me to check it out, or others could look at the pile of read books beside my seat and “discover” new reading.
That’s cool, and there are definite applications - trip planning is one of Alex’s examples which I’ve experienced first-hand, collaboratively browsing the travel section with my wife. Generally speaking, however, my inner-curmudgeon makes me think that I’d prefer to do the vast majority of my browsing at home, interacting on my own terms (Blog comments, etc.) - i.e.: I spend very little time reading at the bookstore trying to meet people.
Me.dium has niche appeal, but the marginal benefit of using it, relative to more-focused social networking (Facebook) or discovery (stumbleupon, cluztr) tools is compartively low from where I’m sitting. Perhaps I need to spend more (any) time in Me.dium - I’ll add it to the queue.
Other Coverage
- R/WW’s orignal me.dium post, with privacy concerns.
- alarm:clock points out the interest Elon Musk family connection.
- Rex Dixon sums up my feelings better than I did.
- Feld thoughts is bullish, looking at me.dium as one facet of the next stage of internet evolution.
- Venture Beat sees me.dium as a big source of value to advertisers.
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5 Responses to “Me.dium is Ma.rginal”
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Good perspective - i think it’s very difficult to create a new product that exists (at launch) in two planes - you highlight the challenge between productivity and casual discovery. While it is easy to “see things converging”, having an ambiguous user utility could kill it before it gets a chance to stake out a rightful space. The noise is getting staggering, and clarity/simplicity is critical. imho perry
Its a bit outside the box as we defined it. The question is will there me more use case and will the users go for existing ones.
Alex
If the me.dium is the message — from this post it sounds like your message is “not for me.”
@Andrew - Correct. I’m not big on collaborative browsing type stuff - the scenarios where I see it being actually useful are so few and far between that I have trouble imagining a business model around it. Then again, I’m sort of crusty and old school - see the reaction to redhedd as an example…
http://techfold.com/2007/06/11/redheddcom-social-networking-for-redheads/
@Perry - good call. “Brand Confusion” or “market segment confusion” seems to be endemic these days. The throw it at the wall philosophy seems to encourage companies to create generalized tools in the hope that some market segment out there will find & use it; IMHO there’s still something to a well reasoned segmentation strategy.
@Alex - use cases and adoption - time will tell, I guess! Not to say that me.dium isn’t impressive tech (great datamining going on there I’m sure) - I just don’t see a facebook-like crush of users ever evolving around it.
[…] Given the number of startups that want you to social network off of your clickstream (cluztr, me.dium), why not experiment with networking off your grocery shopping? Its no more or less […]