We’re wrapping up 2007 and looking forward a great 2008 here at Me.dium HQ. We’ll be focusing on making it easier than ever to surf with your friends.

We had our holiday party on Saturday evening and I’m finally starting to be able to see straight again. Two live bands, guests outnumbering employees at least two to one, a holiday visit from Dr. Tiki and “dirty elf” martinis kept the party going all night.

My roommate, Kelly, is an animal fanatic. All she wants to do after work is snuggle our kitten, Suge Night. Ironically, Suge hates her and runs for her life the second Kelly gets off work. In fact, the only way you’ll find Kelly and Suge in the same room is in the case that Kelly has chased her down and is smothering the poor kitten (with love of course) enough that she’s lost all hope of escaping. In fact, that’s Kelly’s relationship with most pets. Fortunately for Kelly (and the kitten I suppose), we found a certain little Puggle puppy this weekend dimwitted enough to put up with the obsessive snuggles.

His name is Louie and he’s extremely funny looking. He tends to trip over himself, as his disproportional feet are the equivalent of a human walking in flippers. He sounds funny, resembles a 90 year old man, has goofy eyes, runs into things constantly, get confused easily and fits into our house PERFECTLY.

Of course, we now have the reality of the situation to deal with. Following the adoption of Louie, we headed to Petco where he managed to leave a special surprise in at least 3 aisles (-1 for the puppy.) Then, we headed home and he slept all snuggled on my lap with his HUGE ears flopped over my leg (too cute +1 for the puppy.) We arrive and within minutes Kelly is cleaning up 3 or 4 bathroom spots (-1.) Then Louie makes friends with the kitten (+1.) Louie befriends the other roommates (+1.) Louie stays up all night yapping like a new born (-1.) Kelly wakes up to a sleepy puppy that jumps in bed and snuggles because he’s just a bundle of love (+1.) Kelly announces to her family she’ll be bringing a new puppy home for Christmas and her mother brakes down in tears (-10 for Louie.)

Clearly, we’ve got a few hurtles ahead of us. Bringing up Louie is going to be a struggle but he’s ours and we’ll love him for every mistake he makes. He’s got more heart than one can imagine and handles Kelly’s “love” nicely. It may take some time to win over Kelly’s mom but, for now, the kitten is quite pleased.

A certain jolly old elf stopped by the Me.dium office to deliver a new release. Please take a moment to update your Me.dium sidebar (it’s super simple and takes just a few seconds).

We’ve made some changes to the way that you share a web page and start a conversation in Me.dium. The improvement focuses on making it simpler to give your conversation a clear direction for other users. We also addressed a handful of bugs in this release including one that was leaving the privacy shield up if you surf with two web browsers.

I’d love to hear your feedback over in our customer support area at http://getsatisfaction.com/medium.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned over the years in service-based businesses is that listening to your customers is the only way to succeed. And, many companies aren’t lucky enough to have customers that care enough to actually provide meaningful input. Well, thankfully, Medium does have customers that care enough and have been giving us valuable input at every stage of our development.

I received an email the other day from BarefootMeg, a Me.dium user for quite a while now who had always been very frank about her perceptions of Me.dium. She had put so much time and effort into the email that I thought it wold make a lot of sense to share both her thoughts as well as my answers with everyone.

I also included my responses as well. They’re not perfect and in hindsight, I’d probably go back and tweak a few of them, but I think it’s important to keep the conversation as real as possible.

So, it’s just a bit long, but if you have the time, it’s a good read and please feel free to join the conversation…

From Meg:

[I started this email before Thanksgiving, but never got around to finishing it. I hope you find it helpful. I realize these are all totally just my opinions and that I probably don't really have any clue. But as a run-of-the-mill-clueless-user, here's some more of my thoughts on Me.dium. You know, just in case you had nothing better to do with your time. ]

Just for the record, our run-of-the-mill-clueless-users (o.k. your words, not mine) are extremely important to us. If the new users that haven’t been involved in Me.dium long don’t get it, then we have a real problem. In fact, that’s always been one of our biggest problems – explaining what Me.dium can do in a simple, understandable way that doesn’t take an entire paragraph. We’re still not there. We’ve asked some of the best experts I know for help, we’ve asked our users and many others and no one has been able to come up with the simple, short, sweet description. That’s one of the reasons we ran the video contest.

I thought I’d send some rather general thoughts on the site and the product.

I’ve grumbled enough about Satisfaction, but I thought I’d just add one tiny additional comment. I think what surprises me about the use of the 2nd site is that, as best as I can figure it (and I’ll readily admit that I’m not sure I’ve entirely grokked the product yet), the point of Me.dium seems to be to connect people with people, and yet, when it comes to connecting people with people to discuss the product, you send people off site to another place. If the product is designed to connect people, there should be a way to leverage that in this particular instance as well. A special “User Support Chat” tab, for example. Or a really robust F.A.Q. that’s linked to from the user’s personal page (and that also contains a “tip of the day” perhaps). I think the best way to teach someone about the product is to use the product to teach them. If your site was about selling shoes or t-shirts, it might make sense to put user-support into the hands of another company. But you guys are all about connecting people with people.

Completely agree. The dilemma here for us was the real-time vs. the historical dynamic. Me.dium does provide a great real-time communication, well, medium, for helping others with quick questions, etc. However, many of the questions asked by our users area also valuable to other users over time. Until we have a way to add both a sufficient life-span as well as searchability and the ability to track and monitor those questions, we needed a better option. Not to say that we won’t do exactly what you suggest in the near future by adding a “Support Neighborhood” or something along those lines, for right now, we thought our users needed a better solution. After a bunch of research, we decided to give Satisfaction a try. We have not implemented it correctly yet (our fault, not theirs) so yes, it is still way too confusing. We are working hard on both of these issues, both the Me.dium solution and better integration of Satisfaction, we’re just not there yet. (I find myself saying that a lot by the way, but it’s important to keep my perspective on how far we have come and how much we have accomplished here so far as well.). And, as an aside, your comments on the Satisfaction implementation were the ones that really raised our concern flag. So, thanks for that.

OK, other thoughts (and I promise not to mention Satisfaction again. Cross my heart.).

I think that part of my disconnect with the site is that I feel like the site itself is in a bit of a disconnect with the product. Let’s start with “Reveal the real web.” In my mind, the “real web” is a bunch of URLs and the content contained or played with therein. And in some sense, the product is going to connect me with a bunch of URL’s, but isn’t the point not that I make it to the URL, but how I got there? I found the URL because a zillion other people on me.dium were there already and that got me intrigued so I clicked. Or I saw that my brother/sister/best friend/ex-boyfriend/daughter was there and I wanted to see what they’re looking at. I ended up at the URL not because I thought I might find some piece of “the real web” but because I saw other people there and they drew me in.

If I back up out of that mode of thinking and approach “Reveal the real web” from a totally different angle, perhaps you’re trying to tell me that me.dium is going to reveal the social web to me. Somehow, the product is going to help me see the interconnection of relationships among people in a way that I couldn’t see them otherwise. And maybe that’s your thinking on the map. But that breaks down when I look over at my map and don’t see a single person on any of the websites that are showing there. Rather, I basically see my viewing history for the last 20 minutes floating around and making me feel much more alone that I was previously. (Am I really the only person on me.dium who’s visited those sites recently?) And I think that even if the map showed me all of my contacts and what they were up to (Is there a way to make it do that), that’s still just showing me where they’re surfing, not how (or even if) we’re all connected in some way. [I think the themed buttons at the top, what do you call them? neighborhoods or something like that? came out After I wrote this bit. ... like I said. I started this email quite awhile ago. I think the buttons do help pull out the web a bit. I don't know that I feel like anything is "revealed" but it's a step in the right direction. More on those buttons and customization later.]

So in the end I remain at a loss concerning what the “real web” is and how it has been revealed to me through me.dium.

Our thoughts on the real web were based on the concept that the “real web,” or, the combination of both content AND people, was simply something that no one could see before. You could see the content, but you could never see the people and the paths that people take between the content, or that actual movement of people in, around, between and among all the content. Since that was always the case, meaning people have always been doing that, you just couldn’t see it, the web as people previously thought of it was only half (if not less) of the reality. Therefore, we landed on the “Real Web” as a way of illustrating that concept. Maybe good, maybe bad. It was our shot and we’re always open to new suggestions.

As more people start using Me.dium, you’ll feel less alone. When we first started, we actually had tweaked the algorithm to focus more on showing people that were related to you based on activity as opposed to content that was related based on activity. That way, you saw more people, but it wasn’t clear why and the content didn’t always make sense. That’s where the Neighborhoods concept came in. If we give you focused areas of the web to look at, then both the content and people start to make more sense. AND, once you can create your own Neighborhoods (soon, I promise!) in both the Me.dium sidebar as well as widget format, then you can start deciding what things matter to you, and then watching that area of the web whenever you want to see who pops in and what other people in that same area care about. Think of it kind of as worm holes into different parts of the web that you can put anywhere, watch all the activity and interact. Remember, it’s a big web out there. Until there are many, many people using Me.dium, you might seem a bit alone in places. But we’re working on that and your input helps.

That said, the Connect and Discover bubbles seem to fit the product exactly. And I love the burst of color and the flowing feel of the image. I very much get the impression that the internet is made up of flowing and colorful cables upon which I can surf. I think I’d love the image even more if the three info. bubbles were located at the ends of three of those cables. Better yet, wouldn’t it be neat if 8 of those cables’ ends formed the me.dium logo? Yowza!

So I click on “Learn More” and … ouch. There’s the revealing thing again. And this time I get the impression that what’s implied fits more with my second take on the phrase, but I still don’t buy it. My mind hears “world wide” in front of the word “web” and I still can’t connect how that relates to people. There’s nothing in that explanation that indicates web is a social graph sort of thing. (I have to admit that I really like the “Hey, is that you?” line. It embodies the genius of the product. And it definitely fits with “reveal.” It’s that “real web” part that keeps making me trip. *snap*)

Duly noted. We’re in the process of reworking the website again. When we fist launched this one (as well as the one before it) our goal was to drive people directly to download Me.dium. The conventional wisdom being that anything you give someone between page entry and download simply loses people in the process. It’s becoming clearer to us that the web page needs to provide much, much more information and value that only Medium can provide to give people more of a reason to download and be part of Me.dium. So, stay tuned.

“Get your own map of the internet.” I still don’t grok the map. If it was a map, it wouldn’t keep shifting, especially when the move doesn’t make any sense. If I’m on Multiply (which is where I am most of the time I’m online) and I move from one page within Multiply to another page within Multiply, why do I all of a sudden start flying around in my map? I haven’t gone anywhere. What I’d rather see is me at the center of my map (because it’s all about me, right? ) and see other me.dium users floating around me. And if I decide to go join them, then it would make sense for me to jump out of my center spot and find myself with whoever I joined. but I keep feeling like my default location should be in the middle. In the real world, I’m pretty much always in the middle of what I can see. It’s a position I’m comfortable with. As much as possible, I think people “get” stuff better when it’s similar to real world experience. (Of course, I’ve also seen lots of exceptions to that. But that’s mostly because most people don’t think. )

So, this has been a topic of hot debate here since we started. Is it really a map or not? Not really sure if it is in the traditional context of tracking location. However, since we’re dealing with a very limited amount of real estate on the browser – how much space are you really willing to give up right now – we have tried to give the best perspective of both real-time motion and some kind of relevant location based on proximity. Also, Me. in the center vs. Me. floating around has been thrown back and forth with great fervor internally. With Me. in the center, when everything starts to move, it can actually get a bit disconcerting, kind of like the Superman Effect (you flying quickly over the tops of houses and cities, etc) when you make “big” moves around the Web. We’re working on more options, both sizing and concepts, for the map, as well as better ways to represent the chats and conversations, that should give you a bunch more freedom to choose how you would like to see your “Real Web” (sorry!) represented. Eventually, we’d love to open it up for others to create their own versions of what the map should look like based on that data that we can provide. Again, on the roadmap, just not quite there yet.

I love everything in the “Surf with your friends” section. In fact, I notice that pretty much all the videos in the contest focused on this aspect of me.dium. We love our friends. We like things that connect us with our friends. This will be the key to your success (imo).

I completely agree! Unfortunately, until you get a bunch of friends in Me.dium, we still need to provide enough value to justify our real estate. As more people get more friends in Me.dium, that “other value” also gets pretty compelling as well. However, surfing with your friends or “social browsing” as the industry is starting to call it, is an obvious, immediate value that we believe no one lese can really provide yet.

OK, enough about that stuff.

I don’t have much to say about widgets. Multiply doesn’t currently allow javascript additions so I can’t add your widget to my site. To be honest, I’m not sure if I would even if I could. I might add it to my front page, but not to anywhere that would be visible from within the rest of my site. In some ways, the little floating guys can be distracting. I tend to ignore the widget when I go to sites that have it. This might also have to do with my not feeling like I get much value out of the widget. Basically it’s fun to see an icon travel from one site to another. And it’s interesting to note a crowd. I think there should be more than that, there. But I don’t see it when I look. So I tend to ignore.

Two things here. First, we’re working alternatives to javascript for the widgets so that shouldn’t be a problem for much longer. However, until it adds value, who cares, right? So, as I mentioned briefly above, the real value here will be the ability for you to customize your widget/s defining the area/s of the web that you want to watch, plus a bunch more stuff that I’m not allowed to talk about yet, but will be out real soon. So, I completely agree with your current assessment, but keep your eyes open for some great new stuff there.

As I see it, there’s really two main uses for me.dium and two main crowds that those uses appeal to.

Meeting people and “surfing” in the traditional sense of the term online are things that will appeal to kids (teens and 20s). They’re comfortable meeting strangers online. They want to explore and discover things. They’re much less concerned about privacy and much more concerned about “where it’s at” and finding the latest in thing. For them, dragging their friends along is really secondary to the surfing and meeting.

Connecting with friends will appeal more to an older crowd who already feels like they have more than enough friends to keep up with. What they want is a tool to help them stay in touch without adding to their “workload” of friendships. Privacy is critical to them. Surfing is something that they do in a more measured manner — they don’t just *surf* but know key places they want to hit, hit them regularly, and if those key places link them to something new, they’ll try it out. But they don’t willy nilly run around the net looking for stuff. They start from a trusted site or from a trusted friend and “surf” based on recommendations. They really don’t want a bunch of strangers “revealed” to them, even if they are on the same sites. What they really want from me.dium, is to see where their friends are at, to connect with them, and to be guided by them. Yellow people are good. Blue people are eyed with suspicion. (My friends seem to fall mostly into this category.)

Because these two sets of people are so different, and would be coming at me.dium so differently, I really think the product needs to be more customizable, so that the user can set it up to suit them best. It would be nice to have a “default” setting for the map, so I could set it to behave as it does now (which I still don’t get, as I’ve said before, but which I assume appeals to the younger group) or it could be set to show all of my friends, whether they’re on a similar site as mine or not (which would appeal to me. that’s what i like about the product is seeing what people i know are doing and wondering if they’re up to something that i’d like also. even just having a sense of what they’re doing makes me feel closer to them. so whether i surf with them or not, i have this odd sense that i’ve spent a bit of time with them. at the same time, i could care less what all those “blue people” are up to.)

I completely agree with everything above. We’ve tried to build in base level privacy controls and features that allow people to determine how it is the THEY want to interact with Me.dium. Always giving you a glimpse into your friends list and location down the right side of the sidebar is a way to get a quick view and feel in touch with your friends, and the privacy controls let you decide how you want to interact with the rest of the Me.dium world. We really see that there is a big range of how people choose to be in Me.dium ranging from visible to all with well defined profiles that everyone can see, to browsing completely anonymously and just getting value from seeing what the crowds are doing an benefiting from their activity. We’d like to build in filters and skins that give the user much more customization options based on their individual preferences.

I think the “talk” section should be more customizable as well. i haven’t thought this through much, so my ideas are foggy. but if there was a way that i could never see another “hi” post again, i’d be happy. in fact, i don’t know that i ever want to see anything there from anyone except people i know. again, the younger crowd might dig being able to “shout out” to everyone else on all of me.dium. i don’t. in fact, i despise it. on the other hand, if someone who has similar interests as i do found an interesting article and wanted to chat about it, i might be interested in a quick chat on that. perhaps users could select areas of interest that they’d be interested in seeing shout outs about. So everyone that likes music events could select that area and then they’d see all the notices about what’s going on in terms of music events. But I’d be more interested in tech announcements. So I’d only see tech related posts. It would mean somehow making a note about what your chat tab is going to be about so it would only be displayed to the right people. … Still a fuzzy idea, but one that might be interesting to play with.

Are you sure you weren’t listening to us yesterday in our product meeting? I think we all echoed your sentiments above exactly. Again, customization is the key here and allowing each user to decide how they want to interact in Me.dium is critical. We need to give you more and better ways of defining what it is that matters to you and then providing as much value as we can in that manner. Neighborhoods are the first step in that direction, but they are still very “beta.” They will get much better and answer many of your concerns above, but we also need to take a much deeper look at the way we currently do chat to make it clearer, more focused and flexible.

a “help chat” tab would would be nice. and perhaps the user could select on their “profile” page (or on a “settings” page) whether to have the help chat tab be visible or not. if they don’t want it cluttering up the sidebar, they’d just hide it. but if they want to be able to ask a question (or answer one) at any time, it would be easy to go to and an easy way for newbs to learn from the questions and answers of others.

Just pushed this functionality today based on your suggestion. We’re going to try and build a “Help” Neighborhood that would do just that.

I think the younger crowd may want a more robust “profile” page where people can find out more about them. I hate filling out all the usual “favorite music,” “favorite movies,” etc. crap. But for whatever reason, lots of people like that stuff. Go figure. But it would be neat to have a more me.dium-ized version of those things. Instead of “favorite movies” there could be a “best movie site I’ve surfed to lately” sort of line. Ditto with music and the rest of the usual stuff. (In fact, one thing I find interesting about MyBlogLog (though I don’t think it works so well) is that once you’ve visited a site a certain number of times, it’s added to your favorites (or whatever they call it) list. So a me.diumized version of that would be for me.dium to note which movie site we’ve surfed to lately and fill out that line itself. Then the users and their friends will enjoy checking out their pages to see how they’ve changed based on their surfing. A “top 10 favorite sites that i’ve surfed to lately” list would be fun as well. People love to fill out boxes with information about themselves. Especially when it’s idiotic information that won’t mean much in a year or two, but that says something about who they are in that particular moment. (This is probably a younger crowd thing, too.)

We’ve been thinking about this a lot. We think it will be very important to allow Me.dium people to share both their real time and historical data among their friends. That can take many forms from deeper profiles to click-stream data to aggregated activity data to specific recommendations, etc. While I think it seems like this is a “younger crowd” type approach, you’d actually be surprised how consistent across the Me.dium spectrum this type of request is. We’re doing our best to build it in and I’m sure it won’t be perfect when we launch this type of functionality, but we’ll keep tweaking based on feedback.

You’ve made a lot of great changes on the profile pages, btw. They’re looking better all the time.

Well, believe it or not, I think that’s all for now. I hope I haven’t bored you to tears. Thanks for asking for input. I think good customer service is key and you guys have been really good about making yourselves available to people.

Great, great stuff, Meg. I can’t tell you how valuable this type of input is to us. In general, you’ve hit the nail on the head on several points here. It’s encouraging to see people outside of our office with desires for features and functionality that is aligned with our goals as well. Also great to keep getting some new ideas that we hadn’t thought about yet.

In General, Me.dium is still a very young product/company and we always have to balance our exuberance for new features and functionality with getting what we have to work. It’s not always an easy balance to achieve but with people like you staying on top of us as far as what we SHOULD be doing, it always helps drive the organization.

PLEASE feel free to shoot us thoughts, suggestions, complaints and even kudos whenever you feel like it. We’re always listening.

Thanks again, and, Congrats on the winning the video contest!

Thanks,

barefootmeg