Medium too launches snapchat-inspired features

Following Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Hike's footsteps in launching Snapchat-inspired features, Medium is next to copy Snapchat's popular Stories feature.

The publishing company Medium has launched Series (read stories) for its iOS and Android mobile users.

The new “Series” feature lets users create mobile stories using text, images, photos, and GIFS, with video coming soon. Readers can swipe through the posts card by a card like any Snapchat user.

In a blog post, project manager Katie Zhu wrote, "This is our first step toward building a new way to read on Medium that’s both seamless and serialised."

Though Series carries a strong resemblance to Stories, the feature isn't exactly the same. No, we're not talking about the company's attempt to switch up a couple of letters. While Snapchat glorifies temporality, Medium ditches the same. With Series, your posts won't disappear after 24 hours, it will actually develop over time. Medium wants Series to tell "ongoing stories," hence users can create as many different series as they want.

“You can go deeper, share more complex ideas, and tell ongoing stories in a way that you couldn’t with a single post. Whether inspiration strikes all at once or over time, you can start a series whenever, adding to it as you come up with new ideas,” Zhu wrote.

The new Series already has users like Melinda Gates, Bernie Sanders, and writer and cartoonist Jeff Lewonczyk.

The feature comes two months after Medium laid off a third of its staff.

Though, Series has already been rolled out on Android, iOS, and the web, however, currently only iOS users can create serialised posts via the Medium app.