Medium for iOS - Everyone’s stories and ideas. Anywhere, anytime

@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 ;)*

@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. :)

@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 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.

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

@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).

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.

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.

@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?

@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.