Medium

@rrhoover Sooo I didn't work directly on this but a few people invited me to share my thoughts so here goes-- We've struggled with Medium being too intimidating for people for a while; with all that blank space in the editor and so many meaty, well-written stories out there it can be intimidating for new writers! So we'd been exploring ways to support more casual content for a little while and this was a success internally. I personally just wrote my own first short-post today, which was a little short story that I almost certainly wouldn't have published otherwise. Just seemed too brief for a "normal" Medium post! But people seem to really like the post and I'm very happy the casual editor helped me publish it. So personally I'm excited to see how this will empower other people, too! Edit: How do you turn things into links....?

@rrhoover @tessr @_tessr thank you for jumping in tess :) cc'ing @biz in case he has any thoughts

@rrhoover @tessr @_tessr Use HTML not Markdown. (Don't ask me why.)

@thetylerhayes ahh thank you!

@andythegiant Andy, I agree. I see two barriers to people writing on the web: (1) the technology (2) the content. To me, the value for Medium was lowering the barrier of technology. They provided an idiot-proof template to quickly post content in a visually-appealing and clean way. But it didn't do anything to make creating content any easier. And I liked that. It kind of set the quality threshold hold and gave the indication that only high-quality content should be posted. Everyone on the internet has an opinion. So many sites (yes, Twitter included of course) make it unbelievably easy to just post anything --- perhaps a fleeting thought or an unsubstantiated opinion --- and for me, Medium was the place to get away from that noise and find the buried treasure.* I hope it stays that way. *Yes, there is irony that I'm typing up a quick stream of consciousness opinion right now...

@andythegiant I totally agree. I liked that Medium has mostly long-form content, even though there was nothing stopping someone from writing something shorter. I am not a fan of this move.

@alirtariq You're right that Medium was meant to be insightful, but I can tell you with authority that "well-written" and "long-form" were never central to the idea. True story: The name Medium came from Biz and I discussing creating a publishing platform with a 500-word limit. That we didn't end up implementing a constraint and that long-form has thrived on the site is both good and bad IMO. I know it's hard to stretch expectations, but this is the original vision. I think it's going to work great. :)

@ev - I've enjoyed watching Medium's evolution over the past few years (I've also seen several unreleased experiments, once with @meowr while I was a subject of your user testing 😃). At first Medium appeared to be a platform for regular people and independent bloggers to share their stories and ideas. And it still is but there's been an increasing investment in editorial content with publications such as Backchannel, led by veteran @stevenlevy and the numerous open recs for editors/writers on your jobs page. Was it always the plan to commission content and build an in-house editorial team?

@ev Apologies for assuming Medium's goals and thanks for weighing in. Always great to hear from the founders themselves! Seems like this change is really what you guys were wanting to go for from the beginning. What was the reason you've held back till now, if I may ask?