One thing Medium isnt getting credit for, that at its time was a breath of fresh air, was limiting formatting options. Similar to Facebook vs Livejournal/xanga

One thing Medium isnt getting credit for, that at its time was a breath of fresh air, was limiting formatting options. Similar to Facebook vs Livejournal/xanga/myspace, Medium took away almost all your formatting options, except the basics, and made it easy to insert media. Articles always looked good, and consistent, and you had simple metrics to gauge performance. IMHO, the product pretty much when downhill as soon as they started nagging readers. The entire benefit to a reader was simplicity, cleanness, and a lack of distractions. Now it pushes the app and login so aggressively, people feel like giving up and pressing back. Wordpress could do what medium did, but Wordpress was focused on freedom of design, not a standardized reading mode. Also the medium editor is basically the same interface as reading mode. If you want a rough equivalent of the early medium experience, minus the metrics, see https://telegra.ph/ https://telegra.ph/