Chris Brogan, on Ev William’s Medium:
I’ve written five posts, all of them in a different collection … I’ve written about what mantras and chanting have done to improve my business. I’ve written about Microsoft Windows 8 and how it’s a disruptor. I’ve written about my mostly plant-based eating choices. All over the map. If I wrote this way on this blog, it’d be hard to know whether to subscribe or not. (Yes, I write somewhat varied material here, but there’s still a general theme.) That, to me, is the magic button of Medium.
I disagree. Lots of services already aggregate long-form discussions around a common taxonomy (Tumblr being of note).
Plus, this is something Chris Yeh first talked about back in 2007: The Grand Unified Theorem of Blogging — I piggy-backed on it with my own post titled Blogging Audiences and Feedback
In short: the more you talk about, the less focused you are, the less readership your site will enjoy. In other words, if you don’t write for a niche you won’t be “successful.”
As Yeh followed up in the comments: “Success means different things to different people. Like you, I’m content to write about the things that interest me, and to let the chips fall as they may.”
While Medium certainly reminds me of the blog networks and webrings of the early years, I’m confident they’re also aware of the reasons we no longer see webrings and blog networks. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Related: What competition is WordPress up against?
