Medium has come up with a brand new feature that aims to get more people to start reading interesting stuff. The platform has launched a new feature called ‘Series’, that may have been more aptly named stories. However, considering that it is already going to be drawing comparisons with Snapchat Stories, Medium probably thought it prudent to go with a different name.
You can think of Series as a kind of a slideshow, with each slide replaced at a tap. The content on each slide can range from pictures to text to quotes, with videos on the horizon as well.
Describing the service, Medium product and engineering team member Katie Zhu said:
Series are mobile stories that can be added to over time and unfold card by card with the tap of your finger. This is our first step toward building a new way to read on Medium that’s both seamless and serialized.
Though similar to stories, there are a few prominent differences as well. For instance, stories that are part of series are permanent until they are deleted by the author themselves. You can read them once, twice, as many times as you want. The company has started off with some stories from the likes of Melinda Gates, Bernie Sanders, Quincy Larson and Jeff Lewonczyk to sort of inaugurate the feature until more people join in.
The posts that are couched as series support images and videos and can be found by using the Medium app. You can create one by choosing the image that will be the cover page. Then, you find yourself face to face with a bunch of cards. Each of these cards can be modified separately and filled with text, image, quotes…..whatever you want. Once you are done, simply preview everything to make sure its in order and publish. Simple, right?
Meanwhile, readers will have two different sources for series. First off, there are series being promoted by the company that are curated by a team of editor. Second, you have those from your own contacts. Series are also updatable and it appears to me that they could be a good place for someone who wanted to write and showcase a story.
Users can subscribe to stories and get notified whenever it is updated. So basically, you can either create them as something continuous or as something that is written and concluded. The company hopes that the content here will be though provoking and will help people access good content and perhaps come up with some of their own. The service is not available on the web however, you can access it by updating the Medium app on your smartphone.
Learn more by watching the video below”
