It’s Time To Delete Your Personal Publication

Thoughts on the “more relational” Medium

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash, edited by the author.

Yesterday, Medium changed, well, everything about their branding. The “M” is gone in favor of an abstract ellipsis, which I kind of dig. They also unleashed a torrent of new design features adding whimsy and playfulness into the platform.

All of these new features scream blog to me, even if I’m still not sure what a blog actually is. But I’m starting to think that’s ok. A blog is whatever you want it to be (probably), which might be the entire point of this new Medium.

All of these changes are great and finally bring something I’ve long desired to see on Medium: a reason to delete my personal publication.

I’ve had a personal publication for years as a place to keep all the things I published (not in another publication) in one place. It provided an opportunity to play with design and add a bit of my personal style and branding. The problem was it always ran counter to my Medium profile. Well, friend, the day has come to 86 the personal publication. Here’s why:

1: Follower Counts

In the new Medium design, follower counts are displayed in the story header. If the story is in a publication, the publication’s follower count shows there. This is great for large…