Medium (website)

Medium
Screenshot as of June 2016.
Type of business Private
Available in English (specific publications can be in Spanish, or French etc...)
Area served Worldwide
Owner A Medium Corporation
Founder(s) Evan Williams
CEO Evan Williams
Industry Internet
Products
Services
Website medium.com
Alexa rank Increase 333 (As of 21 November 2016)[1]
Registration Free access to articles written by registered accounts, but required for publishing and writing articles
Launched August 15, 2012 (2012-08-15)
Current status Active

Medium is an online publishing platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and launched in August 2012. It is legally owned by A Medium Corporation.[2] The platform is an example of evolved social journalism, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications, or exclusive blogs or publishers on Medium[3] and is regularly regarded as a blog host.

Williams developed Medium as a way to publish writings and documents longer than Twitter's 140-character maximum. It eventually grew into a separate platform independent of Twitter's brand.

Medium also has its own publications, including the online music magazine Cuepoint, edited by Jonathan Shecter; NewCo Shift, led by entrepreneur, author, and journalist John Battelle; and the technology publication, Backchannel, edited by Steven Levy.

Background

Williams created Medium from the ground up, with the idea of encouraging users to create longer posts than the 140-character standard of Twitter. Williams stated, "There's been less progress toward raising the quality of what's produced."[4] By April 2013, Williams reported there were 30 full-time staff working on the platform,[5] including a vacancy for a "Storyteller" role,[6] and that it was taking "98 percent" of his time.[5] By August, Williams reported that the site was still small, though he was still optimistic about it, saying "We are trying to make it as easy as possible for people who have thoughtful things to say".[7] Users can create a new account using an email address or a Twitter, Facebook, or Google account.[8]

User information and features

Platform

Writing

The platform software provides a full WYSIWYG user interface when editing online, with various options for formatting provided as the user edits over rich text format.

Sharing

Once an entry is posted, it can be recommended and shared by other people, in a similar manner to Twitter.[6] Posts can be upvoted in a similar manner to Reddit, and content can be assigned a specific theme, in the same way as Tumblr.

Tag system

A specific difference from Williams' earlier service Blogger is that posts are sorted by topic rather than writer.[9] The platform uses the system of recommendations, similar to "likes" on Facebook, to up vote the best articles and stories, called the Tag system, and divides the stories into different categories to let the audiences choose.

Publications

Publications on Medium are distributing hosts that carry articles and blog posts like a newspaper or magazine. The articles published or saved on can be assigned editors, and can be saved as drafts.

Cuepoint, Medium's music publication, is edited by Jonathan Shecter, a music industry entrepreneur and co-founder of The Source magazine. It publishes essays on artists, trends, and releases, written by Medium community contributors, major record executives, and music journalists,[10] including Robert Christgau, who contributed his "Expert Witness" capsule review column.[11] Medium also publishes a technology publication called Backchannel, edited by Steven Levy.[12]

On February 23, 2016, it was announced that Medium had reached a deal to host the new Bill Simmons website, "The Ringer".[13]

Reception

Reviewing the service, The Guardian enjoyed some of the collections that had been created, particularly a collection of nostalgic photographs created by Williams.[14] TechCrunch's Drew Olanoff suggested the platform might have taken its name from being a "medium" sized platform in between Twitter and full-scale blogging platforms such as Blogger.[6]

Lawrence Lessig welcomed the platform's affordance of Creative Commons licensing for user content,[15] a feature demonstrated in a Medium project with The Public Domain Review—an interactive online edition of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, annotated by a dozen Carroll scholars, allowing free remixes of the public domain and Creative Commons licensed text and art resources with reader-supplied commentaries and artwork.[16][17]

However, the service has suffered criticism from writers, with some confused about exactly what it is expected to provide.[18]

Censorship

Malaysia

In January 2016, Medium received a take down notice from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission for one of the articles published by the Sarawak Report. The Sarawak Report had been hosting its articles on Medium since July 2015, when its own website was blocked by the Malaysian government.[19]

Medium's legal team responded to the commission with a request for a copy of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission's official statement that the post was untrue, for information on which parts of the article were found false, and for information on whether the dispute has been raised in court. The site declined to take the content down until directed to do so by an order from a court of competent jurisdiction.[20] In response, as of January 27, 2016, all content on Medium has been unavailable for Malaysian internet users.

References

  1. ↑ "medium.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  2. ↑ Panzarino, Matthew. "Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams' Blogging Platform Medium Opens Signups To All". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2015-09-10.
  3. ↑ Sussman, Ed. "The New Rules of Social Journalism". Pando Daily. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  4. ↑ Letzing, John (15 August 2012). "Twitter Founders Unveil New Publishing 'Medium'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  5. 1 2 Taylor, Colleen (5 April 2013). "Williams, Biz Stone, And Jason Goldman Shift Focus To Individual Startups". TechCrunch. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 Olanoff, Drew (15 November 2012). "Ev Williams Takes To Medium To Discuss The True Purpose Of His New Publishing Tool". TechCrunch. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  7. ↑ Stone, Brad (22 August 2013). "Twitter Co-Creator Ev Williams Stretches the Medium". Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  8. ↑ "Medium Login FAQ". medium.com. Retrieved 2014-10-25.
  9. ↑ Shontell, Alyson (15 August 2012). "The Cofounders Of Twitter Launch A New Blog Platform, Medium". Business Insider. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  10. ↑ "music producer JONATHAN SHECTER and musician/producer DAN FREEMAN: Entrepreneurship in the Digital Music Industry". The Office for the Arts at Harvard. Archived from the original on October 3, 2015. Retrieved October 2, 2015.
  11. ↑ Christgau, Robert (August 14, 2015). "Welcome to Expert Witness, a New Weekly Column by the Dean of American Rock Critics". Vice. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
  12. ↑ Steven Levy. "Why I Started Backchannel". Medium. Retrieved 3 July 2015.
  13. ↑ Lichty, Edward (2016-02-23). "Medium: Home of The Ringer". Medium. Retrieved 2016-02-23.
  14. ↑ "Twitter founders launch two new websites, Medium and Branch". The Guardian. 15 August 2012. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  15. ↑ Lessig, Lawrence (May 6, 2015). "Why I'm Excited for Medium's Partnership with Creative Commons". Medium. Archived from the original on 2015-09-11. Retrieved 2015-09-15.
  16. ↑ Park, Jane (July 28, 2015). "Happy 150th, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!". Creative Commons. Archived from the original on 2015-09-05. Retrieved 2015-09-16.
  17. ↑ Editor. "About 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'". Medium.com. Retrieved 2015-09-16.
  18. ↑ Dalenberg, Alex (23 August 2013). "Mysterious Medium has writers moderately freaked out". Upstart Business Journal. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  19. ↑ Yi, Beh Lih (2015-07-20). "Sarawak Report whistleblowing website blocked by Malaysia after PM allegations". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  20. ↑ Legal, Medium (2016-01-26). "The Post Stays Up". Medium. Retrieved 2016-01-27.

External links

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