Twitter Notes or Medium?
Should you move to Twitter Notes when it comes out? Will Ev’s original creation surpass Medium?
As reported by TechCrunch, Twitter Notes (formerly Articles) is a replacement for the long threads and notes app screenshots you see on Twitter.
Twitter Notes isn’t out yet, so it’s important to remember we don’t know how this works; we don’t know the feature set and we don’t know how it feels to use.
Who knows, it could be great! Or it could be as bad as Fleets…
Will people even read Notes?
It won’t feel like a blog. It’ll feel similar to Twitter Moments. Medium feels relaxed and slow. When you read a post there’s nothing to distract you; Twitter is distraction central! Look at this:
The worst part is Twitter has ads, and Blue doesn’t even have a feature to remove them, just like editing tweets.
My favourite things to read on Twitter are links, threads, and immediate updates that Twitter is known for. It’s not a blogging platform.
Twitter is my link-log.
I like my separation between Twitter and articles; I practically use Twitter as an RSS reader.
People who don’t use Twitter, don’t read tweets. But people who don’t write on Medium, read Medium.
Unlike Medium, Twitter doesn’t have relationships with publishers. This could be a good or bad thing. Notes could be well received, or maybe no one—including publishers—will use it.
I’m excited to see what publications are created to promote Notes like from The Jolly Teapot mentioned.
What features will there be?
All you get with Twitter Notes is notes…on Twitter. You don’t get any of the bloggy things you’d expect.
Medium has nice URLs you can share with people: name.medium.com/post or medium.com/@name/post
Twitter Notes won’t have nice URLs. Twitter notes will look like Twitter: twitter.com/name/note/123456789…
You can connect your own domain to Medium; this makes it feel more personal. I feel ownership over my blog. Twitter feels like writing post-it notes. Post-its can’t be published anywhere.
You won’t be able to move or import your blog.
I can’t see how highlighting would exist.
You can only ♥️ once, instead of showing your appreciation through 👏.
I don’t imagine discovery will be great, it’s already hard to get people to read your stuff on Twitter. There will be no tags, only the hash kind.
This leads to SEO. I don’t search for tweets very often, but time and time again, a Medium post will come up in my search which leads to more and more discovery.
Just like the addition of Shorts on YouTube’s algorithm, maybe Notes will be preferred over tweets.
It won’t feel like a website, it will feel like Twitter.
How will publishing feel?
Medium has been around the block. It knows how writing and publishing should feel; simple, elegant, and focused.
Twitter looks bold and edgy. Instead of a sensible and refined Medium, we’ll get wide fonts and bright colours.
Apparently you can only add ‘1 GIF, 1 video or up to 4 photos’, which seems absurd.
You won’t use highlighting to change formatting, you’ll get a toolbar. Who wants a toolbar again? We’ve moved on from Word.
It doesn’t have support for markdown, which isn’t a big issue for all people, but it’s worth at least mentioning.
I see Medium as another Wordpress, it’s a place to write things with URLs and titles.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are not those spaces.
Will they also merge Revue into the app and call it Newsletters?
I wonder how Micro.blog will feel.
Via The Jolly Teapot
