Welcome to Medium
Bring Your Stories and Ideas
Medium is a new place on the Internet where people share ideas and stories that are longer than 140 characters and not just for friends. It’s designed for little stories that make your day better and manifestos that change the world. It’s used by everyone from professional journalists to amateur cooks. It’s simple, beautiful, collaborative, and it helps you find the right audience for whatever you have to say.
If you’re here to read, start on the homepage, where you’ll find links to our editor’s picks of interesting new articles, as well as the most popular pieces among readers right now. If you register and sign in, you can write, leave notes for authors, and recommend the pieces you like.
If you’re interested in writing, here are three things to know about how Medium is different:
1. Medium lets you focus on your words
Medium is a beautiful space for reading and writing — and little else. The words are central. They can be accompanied by images to help illustrate your point. But there are no gratuitous sidebars, plug-ins, or widgets. There is nothing to set up or customize.
When you write on Medium, you’ll know that your words and pictures will look great on any device; they’ll automatically adjust to the latest technology and even get better over time.
Medium’s composing tool is truly what-you-see-is-what-you-get and has just the right amount of formatting to tell your stories without getting in the way. In short, Medium is focused on keeping you focused.
“It’s true: Medium has the best web-based editor I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen them all.” —Anil Dash
2. Medium is collaborative
On Medium, you’re not alone. You write beside and with other people. This means your posts link to each other, your ideas bump into each other, and instead of living on an island somewhere out on the web, you’re part of a dynamic whole, where each part makes the others better.
At the heart of Medium is the idea that people create better things together. Even professional writers need editors, and Medium makes it easy to get help before you hit the “Publish” button. These same tools let readers engage by offering feedback and ideas in context (with the author always in charge of what gets seen publicly).
“This is probably the most awesome UI I’ve ever seen for people to collaborate on writing.” —Daniel Stanoescu
3. Medium helps you find your audience
We think great ideas can come from anywhere and should compete on their own merits. On Medium, you can contribute often or just once in a blue moon, without the commitment of a blog. And either way, you’re publishing into a thriving, pulsing network — not a standalone web site, which you alone are responsible for keeping alive.
Through a combination of algorithmic and editorial curation, posts on Medium get spread around based on interest and engagement. Some get hundreds of thousands of readers — and not because they were written by famous people. Medium is not about who you are or whom you know, but about what you have to say.
“Over the years, I’ve published my writing in dozens of places on the Internet. More people read a single Medium post than everything else combined.” —Cliff Watson
Why We Built Medium
In 1999, two friends and I launched Blogger, a simple tool for publishing on the web. Blogs, or “weblogs,” were largely unknown outside a small community of web geeks. The idea that anyone, anywhere, could publish for a global audience seemed radical.
Today, we carry the Internet around on pocket-sized devices with more computing power and pixels than we previously had on our desks a few years ago. We have innumerable options for sharing our deep thoughts or cat photos — with or without a retro filter. Our collective, casual, everyday shares demonstrate that millions of people have the power of a printing press at their fingertips. (And they use it.) That is an amazing advancement.
We think there’s more to do.
It’s clear we’ve only scratched the surface of how we can use the tools available to us to connect hearts and minds. It’s also clear that the way media is changing isn’t entirely positive when it comes to creating a more informed citizenry. Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless, how do we increase depth of understanding, while also creating a level playing field that encourages ideas that come from anywhere?
We don’t know all the answers. But we know that words matter (still), so we built a better system for sharing them.
Join Us
Medium is built for everyone. We encourage you to sign up and give it a try.
You can also read about Medium’s features, see the jobs we’re hiring for, and follow @medium on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.
Thanks for your interest.
