Friday is coming. Fast. Each Friday, I publish a new edition of the Friday Notes Series. As I’m writing this, I don’t have a subject for this week’s edition, but I have this simple idea: ask me something, and I’ll try to answer in the next edition. Don’t be shy. Time is running up. 😅
📖 This week, I received my revenues report from Medium for last year (for taxes purposes). I made less than 500 CAN$. It reminded me that I was a much more active publisher last year than now. My last publication on Medium was on February 12th.
This morning, I spent a few minutes on Medium. I can’t remember when was the last time I visited the homepage. I was curious about the web experience changes introduced since my last visit. Another reminder is that I don’t spend as much time on the platform as I used to.
I’m wondering if I should keep my Medium account. 🧐
📚 While looking around me and paying attention to the generation that follows, I see most people on their screen looking at videos (Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.). I rarely see someone reading on their screen, even less a book. I find it troubling in a few ways. First, I think people are becoming lazy about getting new knowledge and culture. Second, it’s harder to read than watching videos. Third, attention span has never been this short in the younger generation.
When I write an article with an average read time of more than four or five minutes, I know before hitting the publish button that very few people will read it. Those who do are probably older people. I might be wrong. I hope. 😒
Do you feel the same way?
📝 As I gain acquaintance with write.as, a typical blog post content and format is settling in. Each blog post has to be short (less than 400-500 characters), contain highlighted words for improved readability, include tags at the end, a few emojis and optionally a “Discuss” link to invite the user to comment. Each of these posts should require less than 10 minutes to write and publish. 🏷
Today, I deleted 54 blog posts from my blog at https://numericcitizen.me. This blog is where it all started for me, in 2018. Unfortunately, most of these posts were of very low value or simply outdated. This brings me to the question of content value on the internet; things move fast, value often declines quickly. It’s the case for my content anyway.