Medium Launches Snapchat Like Stories (Series) For Medium

Recently Medium released its SnapChat Stories like features. It’s calling it Series. It’s a mobile app only feature, though a Series can be made on Desktop Web as well. Basically, one can split the stories into multiple pages, which can include images and videos or text, which a user would be able to browse through by flipping and swiping right. So Long Tinder Swipes!

Medium, over the past few years, has surpassed many of the other blogging platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, primarily because of its custom Daily Digest, that reaches Medium’s user first thing in their mornings. It contains top content from the tags and topics they have subscribed to. Also, Medium’s UX design is sleek, clean, hassle free, and its interactions including its text editor are a breeze.

Recently Medium release its beta version of a new SnapChat Stories like feature. It’s calling it Series. 

Right now, this Series feature is app only, meaning that you can’t read stories on the desktop website version, but you can create them on the web.

Medium’s Series features can be read and interacted with only on native apps for now

Medium’s Series feature can be made using Desktop Web but seen only in native apps

Unlike SnapChat Stories, Series wouldn’t expire every 24 hours. Also, users can subscribe to it, so a Series post isn’t the end all be all. The author can take this as a leverage to engage his/her users in a story Medium doesn’t have a business model yet. It has many things that could be tried and experimented with. It has also been trying to provide a way for writers to get paid for their work on Medium Publications for example. Medium Series could be that break.

Also with Series, Medium has finally launched center aligning, much to the relief of so many editors of Medium Publications and writers.

It’s not sure, even to Medium team what it wants to make of Series in the coming months, that’s why they have rolled its beta version quickly, and with limited access (that is Stories can be created on Desktop Web or on Mobile, but it can only be seen on the mobile native apps). Medium is trying it as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), improving it as they go ahead.

Here’s how Series will look like on the app:

This feature is a big experimental ground for fiction writers to slowly unfold their stories in right flips and swipes, which are primarily only heavily associated with Tinder.

Product Manager at Medium Katie Zhu said, “We’re really excited about doing this on mobile,” and that there are no imminent plans to bring the experience to desktop. Which probably says something about Medium’s traffic sources.