Yes, this is the main reason. The biggest challenge for any long-form writer in 2016 is discoverability, assuming that you don't already have a huge audience a

Yes, this is the main reason. The biggest challenge for any long-form writer in 2016 is discoverability, assuming that you don't already have a huge audience and you do want people to read your writing. That's why I, for example, tend to guest-post on friends' blogs with larger followings rather than posting on my own small blog. With the near-death of RSS, vanilla blogs have almost no subscription mechanism, so you can't assume people will return to them. And people subscribe to / follow individual blogs far less often than they did circa 2002 / 2003 But Medium has bubble-up features enabling your writing to be discovered. I'm not a huge fan of the platform, but that's why I use it from time to time.