h1. Medium.com April 2016 CMS News https://thebolditalic.com br. http://jothut.com/cgi-bin/junco.pl/replies/68035 "Medium is making its pitch for the commercial publishing web. I guess that's where the money is. Best of luck! (I want the bloggers.)" https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/717356855383756801 - but Dave Winer wrote that on Twitter and not on his own blog site. #medium #publishing #writing #media From: JR's : micro blog - Apr 05, 2016 - reply 12 replies JR: http://www.techmeme.com/160405/p13#a160405p13 - 9 mins ago - # - reply JR: http://mediagazer.com/160405/p12#a160405p12 - 9 mins ago - # - reply JR: http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11362398/medium-for-publishers-the-awl-bill-simmons-the-ringer - 9 mins ago - # - reply JR: "Starting today, more than a dozen operations — including The Awl, Pacific Standard, and the revived local San Francisco site The Bold Italic — are migrating to Medium. More are on their way later this year, including Simmons' site and new offshoots of Time Inc. magazines Money and Fortune." - 7 mins ago - # - reply JR: media dorks can finally rest easy with medium's news in recent weeks that medium is a platform. finally, the media has an answer to their question, "what is medium?" the media cannot function without their questions being answered. - 6 mins ago - # - reply JR: "Medium is offering new design tools for these publishers to customize their sites, custom URLs, and a migration tool to more easily bring the property over to Medium. " - 6 mins ago - # - reply JR: "It also lined up a handful of brands, including Nest, Bose, and Intel, to create native advertisements that can be found at the bottom of posts from sites published by Medium, with revenue sharing plans in place. " - 6 mins ago - # - reply JR: "And it's promising to cross-promote stories published on Medium across its network, offering small sites a traffic boost. Aside from splitting ad revenue, there's no cost to publishers for any of these features." - 5 mins ago - # - reply JR: sounds like a good plan for medium in their long, slow growth idea. medium launched to the public for reading in september 2012, but it was not open to everyone for writing until about a year later. medium has taken a slow approach to development. prob cause they are in it for the long haul. - 4 mins ago - # - reply JR: some businesses and orgs want to research, write, edit, and publish, and then repeat. they don't have the time to worry about silos and the open web and blah blah blah. they want to get their job done and then move on. medium may make this easier for many orgs. it's not medium's fault. - 2 mins ago - # - reply JR: hah! here's an example of the media's angst over the media being unable to classify, define, or categorize medium ... - 20 secs ago - # - reply JR: "This new initiative is a sensible move for Medium, which looks to be on the cusp of solving its identity crisis. Since launching in August 2012, the San Francisco-based company has shifted its focus enough times that it could be hard to discern a master plan." ---- hilarious and so predictable - 1 secs ago - # - reply hr. http://www.theawl.com/2016/04/i-also-could-have-gone-with-medium-cool http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/04/medium-gives-publishers-new-ways-to-make-money-instant-articles-and-amp-support-are-on-the-way/ https://medium.com/electric-literature/electric-literature-is-moving-to-medium-433e21cfed69#.19rlsp1l4 http://www.talkingnewmedia.com/2016/04/05/medium-introduces-medium-for-publishers-to-attempt-to-attract-content-producers/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/04/05/medium-will-let-pay-subscribe-favorite-publications/ https://femsplain.com/making-new-homes-27dbfb2e694c#.bpw28cok8 http://digiday.com/publishers/medium-brings-publishers-including-awl-hairpin/ https://medium.com/the-story/making-medium-more-powerful-for-publishers-39663413a904#.nae6lk59k http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/05/the-awl-and-other-indie-publishers-are-moving-to-medium/ https://medium.com/the-story/revenue-on-medium-5e7e6218f70c#.pxkiajuoh http://www.wired.com/2016/04/medium-now-way-power-entire-sites-including-ads/ https://psmag.com/introducing-the-new-psmag-com-3309d91fcd6d#.iiq7473d3 https://publishers.medium.com/index.html http://www.poynter.org/2016/medium-becomes-latest-tech-company-to-lure-publishers-aboard/405247/ br. https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/717678408130555904 q. Turns out that Medium is http://Wordpress.com , w/o open source, nicer editor, confusing comments, and no more flow than your own blog. q.. A gross observation. Confusing comments? Not to me. Medium uses the reply-as-a-blog-post function as its "commenting" system. Granted, the margin notes function still exist, but I rarely notice them nor access them when I do see them. Medium started with margin notes for comments, but I like their reply-as-a-blog-post feature. Medium is more than a nice editor. Medium is a comfortable reading environment. For publishers who like to earn a living, they like Medium because of the audience size. Many publishers simply want to research, edit, and write. They don't want to install nor manage software installations. They don't have the time to worry about the open web. I have always admired Medium's slow approach to growing its business. It has taken 3.5-plus years for Medium to determine its primary direction. I don't see anything wrong with evolving slowly. What Medium offers to publishers looks fascinating. For many publishers, Medium satisfies their needs. If the open web wants to succeed, then we advocates, programmers, designers, and writers need to create an environment that is simple to use like Medium. And open web alternatives need to provide the network that attracts readers. I believe that the #Indieweb group has been trying to solve this problem for a few years. Many people who use Medium do so only to read articles. A reader can encounter a wide variety of content in one spot. How does the open web compete with that? The Indieweb group is taking a long, slow approach to evolve and promote their ideals. Each day, week, or month, it seems that more people are adopting the Indieweb concepts. That does not mean giving up entirely on social media. Many Indieweb people are heavy users of social media, but they use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. from their own personal websites. They post to their own website first, and their new content gets syndicated to their social media sites. And the interactions that occur on social media, such as likes, shares, commmetns, come back to the Indieweb users' personal websites. It's amazing, but it's also somewhat complex for mass adoption. But over time, these functions may grow simpler. For now, Medium.com is the answer to many publishers, and that's okay. It will be interesting to see how this works over the next 3, 6, 12 months. br. https://publishers.medium.com q. *Bill Simmons’ The Ringer* We were drawn to Medium because they *already had the platform and infrastructure that would have been so time consuming to build on our own,* but we never expected how innovative the partnership would be and how much fun we'd have working with them. q.. https://medium.com/the-story/making-medium-more-powerful-for-publishers-39663413a904#.4xt64qpub q. On Medium, publishers have full control over their content and *spend exactly zero time, money, or effort on tech and hosting,* instead focusing their resources on producing great content and reaching new audiences. q.. Goals to achieve for the Indiweb and open web supporters. Decent-looking Medium-hosted websites: * https://femsplain.com * https://psmag.com * https://thebolditalic.com * https://hopontheboat.com Drawback: the sites may all look the same from an aesthetic standpoint, but content is the main focus of these sites. People will read these sites if readers like the content. Readers won't be influenced only by the sites' aesthetics. Design by writing. Attract readers by creating great content. https://thebolditalic.com/we-are-excited-to-partner-with-medium-b66cb93b447d#.vsz86cgqm q. In an age where more and more indie publishers are folding due to costs and basic economics, we want to find a way to keep The Bold Italic alive no matter what. Medium affords us that opportunity by giving us an amazing infrastructure to keep TBI going. q.. Medium.com may now be the best place for a new media org to setup shop. No need to consider technology, hosting, programming, design, security, app development, etc. Medium.com already offers an app for at least reading and maybe some publishing. The app will work also with these sites that host at Medium, using a custom domain name. #medium