@anildash has a fantastic essay on Medium titled, "What Medium Is." http://dashes.com/anil/2013/08/w... As quoted in the piece @ev admits (via tweet, naturally), "I like confusing people." https://twitter.com/ev/statuses/... Medium has so many similarities to Twitter in that people didn't get it in the beginning. I could go on and on of why I love Medium but I'd prefer to hear from others first.

Medium just launched version 1.2 most notably adding iPad support.

Medium solves some of the challenges in writing, starting with step #1: creating a blog. But there are several other points of friction that I hope Medium can help minimize or eliminate entirely. @evansolomon - to your point, you're helping people get discovered but in reality, a majority of the writing won't be read by many people, and probably shouldn't. BUT that doesn't mean it's any less valuable to the RIGHT people. Sometimes it takes only one reader to make an entire piece worth writing, as I pointed out in a piece I wrote several months ago (https://medium.com/writers-on-wr...) where I reference @semil's Quora post, The Power of One Unique Visitor (http://semil.quora.com/The-Power...). Most of us realize this yet we're vain and still measure success by page views. I'm curious to hear what the Medium folks think of this topic and how you plan to motivate people to continue writing that do not receive significant attention. We need more feedback loops.

We've all been waiting for this. I've been fortunate enough to play w/ an early version. I love the stumbleupon-like navigation.

@evansolomon @dustin hey guys, thanks for participating here....curious to hear more about how Medium is "building a network rather than forcing writers to also be their own distributors." I love the design and usability of Medium, but I've struggled with distribution. I feel like Medium still asks a lot of me in terms of driving attention to a story.

@evansolomon @dustin What's in the app pipeline to help writers? A tool to take notes which translate into a draft to complete on the desktop? Easy access to stats? Commend you guys for releasing this even if "it's not finished by any means." Great early product.

@micah those are all good points. The app is, as you say, a "first shot". It's not finished by any means. One point you make is about "removing the value of the writer". I actually think about this kind of in a more optimistic sense, which is elevating the value of the content. Medium definitely places the content before the individual in a lot of elements of its design, and that's not an accident. But again, your points are valid and there's a fine line between making useful suggestions and removing the user's feeling of agency in their own experience. On the web we've been making slow steps toward giving readers more context about how and why recommendations are chosen for them. That context is less present on mobile, and I think you're articulating some of the problems that can cause. When you say you "don't enjoy reading," do you mean in general or specifically in the (current) Medium app?

Owen, nothing happened to self publishing, we just think it's not the right tool for everyone and that there's a lot of value we can add by (1) making everyone's content look good and simple and (2) building a network rather than forcing writers to also be their own distributors. We agree we need more variety in the way content looks. We're working on it now, while still keeping everything beautiful. It's not going to be right for everyone -- if you want fully customized design that's an option you have in a lot of places, part of our bet is that a lot of people don't actually want to deal with that. Btw we don't own any content you post on Medium, you do. That's not special, by the way. There would be few legal decisions more risky than companies claiming ownership over ugc.

The internet has conflated being a writer (or any kind of creator) and being a distributor. There are good reasons that has happened, but historically it's actually quite an anomaly. Part of our core thesis at Medium is that the status quo isn't quite the right balance.

@ow Custom domains aren't on the roadmap. Our vision for Medium is very much a network. That doesn't make custom domains completely impossible, but it probably makes them less relevant. We are explicitly *not* building a disjoint collection of sites running the same software (which lots of other products do very well) — we're building a network (of stories, of creators, of readers, of collaboration). Custom domains have come up and I don't remember if we've ever 100% ruled it out, but it's nowhere in our current plans.

@kaz we're definitely not done yet on the network front. We're getting there but it's still largely aspirational. One of the things we've been looking at a lot recently is the portion of reading time (https://medium.com/data-lab/86c4...) that's internally referred, and it's making good progress. Currently, Medium is a little like a flywheel. We still need some external energy (like sharing it on your Twitter/Facebook/etc network) to get things moving, then we can add some acceleration. Long term, we believe that one of the problems Medium will solve is helping writers find readers (hopefully the *right* readers, but that's another conversation).

@rrhoover we have ideas for stats to help people understand engagement beyond pageviews, and in a context that makes sense for them. Our currently stats are *very* old and really don't reflect the way we think about engagement and success internally. We just haven't prioritized getting the new stats finished and launched yet. Lots of other things going on...you know the story.

@ow thanks for the feedback, Owen. We've found great response to our very simple, don't-know-how-to-design-but-I-want-to-write, content-first product. For most folks, who have something to say, but lack the skills to setup a blog, or care to choose from templates, Medium is working well. We purposely have removed as many barriers to writing online. Obviously, what we've built isn't going to work for everyone — nothing ever will. I hope that you give Medium a try and see if you enjoy the writing experience. As we *very clearly* state in our terms of service, we *absolutely do not* own your content: "You retain ownership of all copyrights and any other intellectual property rights in your User Content. " Hope that clears up any confusion. *edit: I see @evansolomon already replied ;)*

@ow, thanks for being levelheaded and not just here to complain. The world needs more editors with your openness.

@kaz absolutely agree. Checking your stats, you'll see that Medium does indeed drive internal traffic to your posts, but it's not where we'd like it to be yet. We are absolutely working on improvements to enhance network effects inside of the system.

@evansolomon are you guys using anything special to center the images on the more engaging part of the picture when it comes to full screen on the iphone?

@evansolomon - these are nitpicks really. There is a reason books are full justified, it helps the eye understand the beginning and ends of lines. The font of the story is a serif, which is just hard to read for extended periods of time. Also, since I don't know why a story is selected, I spend a minute trying to understand the selection. I am naturally distrustful of the web (must be from my years in ad tech and startups) so I am brought out of my "reading for enjoyment" mode before I even start reading. The left/right swipe is not self-evident, so if I click on a collection title, I don't quite understand how to get back to the post I was reading. The heart plus avatars above the title are confusing, the author is almost hidden if there are a lot of them. Again, the current layout makes the author less important (I understand that clearly medium is focused on the content not the author -- which as a complete aside, makes the whole "we give authors reach" kinda hollow. Truthfully, if all the author's worth is the creation of the content (much like the only value of a 3D printer is the item it creates), then the mission/value of medium are misaligned at best, misrepresented at worst) If I click on a collection title, I am brought to the collection, but a left swipe puts me back in the post feed. I would assume if I selected the collection it was because I wanted to read posts in that collection. Thats a lot more than you asked, but generally, if I want to read, I want to feel in control and have a simplified experience. Here is another just general comment - this was launched as the Medium iOS app. It's not. Its the Medium *Reading* app. The press created incorrect expectations. And, while this might have happened (I didnt see it), I would have had an onboarding modal in the app that said "At medium, we believe that the content stands above all else. To this end, we pulled out what is core to the medium experience, your personalized reading list and started there." Again, just my $0.02. It is a great start, and you guys should feel proud of the effort; I will certainly use it daily.

Hey all. I know I am super late to this. Here are some quick thoughts -- 1) I am neither the product designer @dustin is or 2) the engineer @evansolomon is. 3) I have a ton of respect for the time, effort, heart and soul go into the release of any software. Here is my primary disappointment: The app is clearly a discovery app, yet there is no ability for me to insert any of "me" into it. The assumption is that the content presented is either: 1) algorithmically determined (the robots win over the people); or 2) or curated (the people win over the robots). In each case, because I have no input into the content presented (I assume its a mix of curation and the collections I follow) it because a reading assignment vs a reading experience. Frankly, I don't enjoy reading. Reading is not consumption. Its an experience. If the problem that medium is solving is helping writers find readers, then the app does a great job of presenting me new content, but it should then make it easier for me to get to know the writer. Yet, this is not core to the Medium experience. Instead, its about reading/following collections, which by definition, remove the value of the writer (keeping the value of the content). This is why there are no real writer branding tools (domains, etc.) only content promotion. But, I'm getting sidetracked. The app is a great first shot. It eliminates everything other than the read, and except for some font and design choices (which are quibbles), it serves an interesting purpose. Unfortunately, for me, its too minimal at this point.

@evansoloman @dustin thanks for the replies guys. Nice to see such legitimately awesome people jumping into the discussion and being so honest. Cool to hear you're adding support for some design variations in the future, but I agree that most people don't care about that stuff, it's indeed more about lowering the barrier to actually writing. Out of curiosity, are you looking to add custom domain support in the future? I'm going to put my actions where my mouth is by signing up/giving Medium a real serious shot. :)

I might be the odd one out here, but I just don't "get" Medium. Not only is the design very bland and unexciting (oh, look, everyone gets the same layout!), there's no custom domains or branding and all content that users write belongs to the Medium platform once it's published (i.e you no longer own the rights). It doesn't make any sense - what happened to the self-publishing blogging world, where there were unique designs and layouts that caused the reader to be delighted/inspired? I hope that this trend isn't here to stay. I'm tired of seeing different words on the same page layout. Has the internet given up on creating unique experiences? Will we see "big" self-published types appear out of Medium? Edit: I was wrong about not owning content - thanks to the medium folks for clearing this up