Medium

 Medium  is an article hosting silo, and as of June 2016, the owner of Superfeedr.

Why not
Why not to use Medium, see:
 * 
 * 

How to migrate away
The best option to migrate away from Medium is currently micro.blog.

Note that micro.blog explicitly has medium to long form blog posting support:
 * https://help.micro.blog/2018/writing-longer-posts/

See https://help.micro.blog/2019/medium-import/ for instructions on how to migrate from Medium to micro.blog.

Features
Medium provides the following features:


 * The ability to use one's custom domain name
 * n.b. They've had this feature in the past and removed it.
 * Ability to import and export one's content
 * signup &amp; login with Twitter sign-in
 * indieweb equivalent: signin via RelMeAuth or IndieAuth
 * post an article
 * recommend (their equivalent of like) an article that you've just read
 * add an article to a curated publication (requires approval from the publication owner)
 * inline/per-paragraph/side comments
 * profile page (equivalent of indieweb homepage) configuration including
 * icon (from Twitter)
 * name (from Twitter)
 * plain text bio (from Twitter)
 * API announced on 2015-10-07, including an official cross-post plugin for WordPress and an IFTTT channel
 * Algorithmically generated recommendations based on a signed-in user's reading
 * Algorithmically generated recommendations based on a signed-in user's reading

POSSE
It is possible to automatically (via IFTTT) and manually POSSE articles to Medium.

Automatic POSSE
From: https://medium.com/@saul/creating-medium-stories-via-rss-c2ac93d08288 UPDATE: There is no longer a publish from RSS trigger on IFTT UPDATE: Medium removed access to their publishing API


 * Create and sign into your Medium and IFTTT accounts
 * Make sure you have a valid RSS (or possibly Atom per IFTTT's feed channel which allows it) feed containing accepted markup.
 * Accepted markup for Medium’s Publishing API
 * h1, h2, p, blockquote, figure (img, figcaption), b, strong, i, em, a href, hr (section break)
 * Go to the Medium Channel on IFTTT, click Connect.
 * Go to the RSS-to-Medium recipe and click the gray Advanced Settings link underneath the blue Add button.
 * Put your feed URL into field "Paste a Feed URL here".
 * Click Add button

Updates occur every 15 minutes

Manual POSSE

 * 1) Publish on your own site. Copy the permanent link's URL.
 * 2) Click on your avatar in the top right corner.
 * 3) Click on Import story.
 * 4) Paste in the URL.
 * 5) Edit the post on Medium if it took in a footer or put content in the wrong place (a header into the Medium title, for example).

Medium will automatically add an “Originally published at” note to the bottom of the post. It will also add a  link to the page pointing to your original post, making it so parsers know to get the post from your website when they are looking for the canonical version.

WordPress Plugin
Unfortunately, we are unable to support the WordPress plug-in any further. As this is an open-source tool, we suggest you file a ticket for the community to review and fix. Additionally, you can always manually import your stories into Medium using our import tool: https://medium.com/p/import I am sorry for the inconvenience, and if you have any specific questions please let me know. Medium WordPress.org Plugin Support Page
 * Update the WordPress plugin has been deprecated and will no longer be supported. This maybe related to Medium shutting down their write API.

Jeremy Keith
is using Medium's API to automatically post copies of articles to Medium: Syndicating to Medium.

Shane Becker
Shane Becker is manually POSSEing his articles to Medium since at least 2013-08-08 (maybe longer) e.g.:
 * http://iamshane.com/articles/2013/8/8/1/json-ld-is-an-uneeded-spec
 * POSSE copy: https://medium.com/indieweb-thoughts/70d1ab49bfbb

Kevin Marks
is manually POSSEing his articles to Medium since 2014-04-21, e.g.:
 * http://www.kevinmarks.com/fragmentions.html (2014-04-17)
 * POSSE copy: https://medium.com/@kevinmarks/fragmentions-41ef2be9953f

Eric Meyer
Eric Meyer manually POSSE’d a blogpost to Medium on 2015-07-29:
 * http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2015/07/07/undoing-oncutoncopyonpaste-falsities/ (2015-07-07)
 * POSSE copy: https://medium.com/@meyerweb/undoing-oncut-oncopy-onpaste-falsities-5e337cc443

He described his problems with the process in a follow up post that was first published on Medium and then manually PESOSed back to his own blog, 2015-07-30:
 * https://medium.com/@meyerweb/medium-trials-30cb485a92e7
 * PESOS copy: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2015/07/30/medium-trials/

David Mead
David Mead used the WP plugin to POSSE a blogpost to Medium on 2016-01-24:
 * http://davidjohnmead.com/blog/2016/01/24/is-the-openwebindieweb-still-for-anoraks/
 * POSSE copy: https://medium.com/@davidmead/is-the-openweb-indieweb-still-for-anoraks-b1377a90594d

Other Examples
Examples from more people with independent sites:

Peter Gasston
Peter Gasston started “experimenting with x-posting to Medium” on 2015-08-07:
 * https://medium.com/@stopsatgreen/exploring-url-discovery-with-the-physical-web-85f9be9e7246
 * POSSE copy: http://www.broken-links.com/2015/08/06/exploring-url-discovery-with-the-physical-web/

POSSEing likes
If you post a like of a Medium article, what is the best way to POSSE that like to Medium?


 * Bridgy Publish feature request: https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/712

Official Export
Official documentation. Export format is HTML with microformats
 * go to https://medium.com/me/export
 * click the export button
 * wait for an email
 * click the link to download a .zip file full of HTML documents
 * these have a footer appended linking to the medium url that has the date exported
 * they break embedded tweets and youtube videos,
 * they replace external links with a redirect to a /r/?url= link that obviously doesn't work locally or on a server without you adding code

Medium-to-Markdown
Python script to output a Markdown version of a Medium post: https://github.com/markbiek/Medium-To-Markdown (If you have experience using this, please make notes here.)

API is write-only
 @majelbstoat is the medium API write only? There&#39;s no docs on fetching posts, only creating them. &mdash; Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks) March 22, 2016  @kevinmarks For the time being, yes. Going to approach that thoughtfully, recognising that lots of APIs have given and then taken away. &mdash; Jamie Talbot (@majelbstoat) March 22, 2016

buggy rel-canonical implementation
If you set the rel-canonical for a post on Medium using their API, it both fails to do so correctly, and then resets (via JS?) the rel=canonical link to a medium.com URL, not what you set it to.


 * Details: https://github.com/Medium/medium-api-docs/issues/19

Downtime

 * 2016-03-03 the homepage returned the HTTP 500 error below. The link "interesting to read" was to https://medium.com/top-100, which also failed intermittently.
 * [[File:medium-down-2016-03-03.png]]

Nagware
Since at least 2017-08-19 Medium started showing modal popup nagware when viewing an article after you have read some number of articles that month. The dialog tells you how many Medium posts you've read to guilt you into signing up. (current limit is 3)

Nagware modal 2018-05-29
Note the now 3 (used to be 14) articles per month limit since at least 2018-05-29, likely earlier.



From tweet: https://twitter.com/geddski/status/1001590716265512961 since at least 2018-05-29 "'2017: maybe I should just use medium instead of my own custom blog? 2018: whew'" — @geddski May 29, 2018

Nagware modal 2017-08-19
Note the 14 articles per month limit since at least 2017-08-19, perhaps earlier.

Criticism

 * Medium may have shut down their publishing API for third-party developers.
 * Update: Medium announced that they identified a spam vectore in the publishing API and had to revoke tokens. People can recreate apps for publishing
 * 2010-07-10 http://veganstraightedge.com/articles/2010/11/07/no-more-sharecropping
 * POSSEd to Medium: https://medium.com/indieweb-thoughts/9d0e36524dbf
 * 2014-05-30 Medium doesn't support footnotes
 * 2014-06-09 Medium does not appear to show the full published date in the visible content. Instead there is a Open Graph Protocol meta element:
 * Example: https://medium.com/binary-times/use-your-own-product-or-die-ba3e2d738a55
 * It appears that the year is displayed depending how recent the article is. A 2013 article linked above includes the year in the visible content, but as of this writing (2014-06), the example link only shows "Jan 16," because it is recently published, in the current year.
 * 2015-05-21 @JosephRooks:"@kevinmarks @ev the other key difference is that #IndieWeb isn't BSing people about 'openness' to create phony feel-goodsies."
 * 2016-03-03 I also think there's a lot of potential for premium or subscription or even user-paid content. Some sort of paywall or membership.
 * 2018-03-25 Unclear account suspensions (with unclear reinstatement)

Walled Garden / Content Farm









 * Custom domain support announced on 2015-03-12, in "...very limited beta" but was stopped in 2017(?) and is not available for new domains, later officially confirmed:  Medium is no longer offering new custom domains 2018-04-30


 * https://twitter.com/om/status/1037367763298398208
 * "John @gruber uses words very effectively. Well said...." @om September 5, 2018
 * ^^^ referenced article: Medium Deprecates Custom Domains Service by John Gruber (Daring Fireball)

Promoting App over Web

 * 2015-09-01 Feeling Like An Unwelcome Guest on medium.com by Peter Gasston

Lightweight Marketing Articles
More of a criticism of *reading* Medium (e.g. clicking links through to Medium posts)
 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13570227: "The articles on medium.com seem to be lightweight, designed for marketing purposes. All carbs, no protein." … "Lately it seems they are very much marketing pieces"
 * more criticisms there that could be extracted and quoted like bad TOR UX, 'they do signal "low-quality"' / "not enough real world depth of experience behind them", iOS app crashes "using an iphone 4s with ios8 and medium crashes"

Other

 * https://medium.com/surveillance-state/19a5db211e47 (currently 410s - anyone have an archive?)


 * 2014-07-23 Medium rolls out New Editor Features, marginalia comments are full of disappointment and criticism
 * "We wanted to be writers. you made us into designers." (currently 410s - anyone have an archive?)(archive.org snapshot of article; does not contain the marginalia comments : http://web.archive.org/web/20150921033039/https://medium.com/the-story/new-editor-features-title-images-and-more-5588495ec3c0 )


 * 2013-07-10 https://twitter.com/t/status/355069622325747713 (these links undefined posted are already included here)


 * Criticism: 2019-01-15 SvN: Signal v Noise exits Medium


 * Criticism: Zero-day API termination: 2019-01-30 Ending our Medium integration "Sometime in the past few weeks, Medium abruptly deleted third-party access to their publishing API. There was no warning before, or notice after, this happened — apps just stopped working (including ours)."


 * 2019-01-24 https://twitter.com/macguru17/status/1088387105519255553
 * "What the hell… Did @Medium just really kill of *every* 3rd party integration? Without *any* prior notice. Issuing new tokens only by request through a *form*. And also just silently revoking *all* existing integration tokens. Suddenly, out of nowhere.  https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/213480228-Get-integration-token" @macguru17 January 24, 2019


 * 2019-02-17 https://twitter.com/html5test/status/1097090786833899522
 * "One more reason to avoid Medium as a writer and reader. If you publish on Medium you are choosing to put your content in a walled garden and out of your own control, and out of reach of readers.  Medium is not the open web and not a replacement for your own blog or site." @html5test February 17, 2019


 * 2019-02-18 https://twitter.com/slicknet/status/1097584328962240512 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DztnH89VsAg5hGM.jpg
 * "Wait, why did I come to this site again?" @slicknet February 18, 2019


 * 2019-04-13 Medium tedium "Medium hasn’t invented anything, they’ve just tried to commoditize long-form blogging and put a sheen on it. There are so many better ways to share your thoughts to the world."


 * 2019-05-03 https://twitter.com/daveverwer/status/1124276437886951425
 * "If you're blogging on @Medium in 2019, you're doing it wrong. It used to be a shining example of good readability and user experience, now it's user hostile at every opportunity." @daveverwer May 3, 2019


 * 2019-02-26: Breaking Up With Medium (tweet https://twitter.com/trionkidnapper/status/1124440949399199744 )


 * Criticism: https://twitter.com/cswordpress/status/1128355463630925824
 * "Dear accessibility practitioners, please don’t use @medium as your primary publishing platform. Syndicate there if you must, but Medium doesn’t support alt text for images, and has given no indication that it plans to. Its last comment on the subject ... https://www.customerservant.com/7869-2/" @cswordpress May 14, 2019


 * 2019-06-03 Why Medium Actually Sucks
 * ^^^ commentary on the above article on Hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20115037 like "I feel like we are beating a dead horse here. Everyone I talk to knows Medium sucks."


 * 2019-10-01 The gaming of Medium by clickbait merchants by John Naughton


 * 2019-10-28 Criticism, and thread: https://twitter.com/raymondcamden/status/1188831423089655808
 * "Please stop posting on Medium." @raymondcamden October 28, 2019


 * 2019-11-09 Is anti-workers, anti-protest, takes down corporate criticisms: https://twitter.com/sashaperigo/status/1192973306720206848
 * "Instacart Shoppers wrote a Medium post explaining what’s happening to them and asking for software engineers and other employees to speak out against their bosses. @GoogleWalkout shared it today. Instacart flagged it to Medium, and it’s been TAKEN DOWN! https://link.medium.com/VW7Oy3D9r1" @sashaperigo November 9, 2019


 * 2020-07-20 Multiple Criticisms: Why Medium is Not the Home for Your Ideas by Rahul Chowdhury

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