JF Martin

March 15, 2021

Finally Found my Use Case for HEY World

Every single day since the official release of HEY World, I'm thinking: what can I do with HEY World? I like it so much; I cannot ignore it. Something has to happen because of it. Today, out of nowhere, I finally found my use case for it. Let me explain, briefly. 

On December 10, 2020, I wrote on Medium:
In recent months, Medium made quite a few changes to their platform. Medium is morphing into something different, enabling more writing, allowing more people to connect and adding features usually associated with a blogging platform.

For me, it was an occasion to start of a new series, called “the Friday Notes series”, inspired by Jean-Louis Gassée's Monday Note. The subject of these posts mostly revolved around being a writer and its related challenges, and then some more. So far, fourteen issues have been published and grouped together under my Numeric Citizen Tidbits magazine, a Medium-based magazine with seven subscribers 😳🤷🏻‍♂️, which is pale in comparison to the more than 700 people following my personal Medium profile 😎. Yet, these weekly posts never really gained traction (all posts were behind Medium’s paywall, which might be part of the explanation). What’s the point of publishing is so few people can have access to my content?

Now, I think it’s time to move Friday Notes to a new home, a more welcoming place, a more open world in the name of HEY World. My publishing activities will continue on Medium, but outside of the Tidbits magazine. I’ll concentrate on feature articles with the most traction potential, because, you know, $$$. 🤩 

Artificial constrains

With Medium, I tried to fit each post with the 150 words limit imposed by the “short form” post format, which can be read without having to hit the “read more” button at the bottom of each post. In retrospect, I don’t really like this artificial limit. Another thing that bugs me about Medium: the editor is great on the web, Medium started a trend because of its simple editor, but their mobile app really sucks for writing and editing. HEY email client is available everywhere, it’s better. It’s a huge advantage, for me.

HEY World is winning over me. I’m very happy about this. You won’t have to be a paying member to read my upcoming posts, just by subscribing with your email address or through the RSS feed, and you’ll be good to go! I’m hoping you’ll enjoy the ride. Meanwhile, if you’re a member of Medium, you can check my previous posts.

This coming Friday, I’ll write my last post of the series on Medium, post #15. The title will be: Friday Notes are dead, long live Friday Notes!