Medium, a rising blog publishing platform dedicated to high-quality writing, is launching its native iPhone application next week, The New York Times’ Bits Blog reported yesterday. Filing as Medium’s first mobile application since the service’s inception in 2012, the app will initially be strictly focused on reading Medium posts and won’t include editing functionality akin to, say, WordPress’s free iOS app.
The service already has a great mobile site that looks business on small form-factor devices and releasing a native iPhone app could go a long way toward boosting its appeal among mainstream users…
“Next week, Medium will introduce an iPhone app for reading posts (but not yet for writing them),” notes the article. The story makes no mention when an Android app might follow, but it probably won’t take too long.
Founded by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone in August 2012, Medium is a cross between micro-blogging platforms like Twitter and full-scale blogging platforms such as Blogger (which was also created by Williams).
The service now receives a cool 13 million unique visitors per month.
Unlike traditional blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger and tons of others, Medium sorts posts by topic rather than writer or date published.
There are no comments as readers can instead leave notes related to specific words or phrases, provided the post author has allowed notes on his or her posts.
Moreover, Medium takes care of reformatting posts for tiny screens and posts include an estimate of how many minutes they will take to read.
The novel concept aims to surface high-quality longform writing from some of the best amateur and professional writers the web has to offer. As with all novel things, Medium isn’t without its fair share of controversy.
One of the common sources of criticism leveled at Medium is writers themselves as some authors appear perplexed as to what Medium is expected to exactly provide.
I don’t post on Medium, but am an avid reader there.
Having discovered some of the most original writing and very insightful posts on Medium, I wholeheartedly recommend you give this service a chance.
Have you read some of the posts on Medium?
If so, did the stories strike you as original and worth reading?