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Medium Goes Retro, Launches an iPhone App

The hotmedium-logo-150x150[1] tech story today concerns the up and coming blogging platform Medium, and its decision to go retro. This 18 month old startup, which has made a name for itself by exploring new ways to display and publish stories and articles, now has an iPhone app.

How very 2010 of them.

I know that few will see it this way, but Medium is actually bucking the latest trends in developing for the web. While they followed one trend by developing a website which can be comfortably used on most screen sizes, they are also going against another trend: releasing apps which work on all platforms.

Medium released an iPhone app today, and not an HTML5 app (like the Kindle Cloud Reader) which could be used on other platforms. Given that Medium is arguably a trendsetter for web publishing and website design,  that makes their move retro.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not being critical of their efforts. I just thought that it was worth noting that they went for a single platform app rather than one which we could all use. Perhaps I am misreading the importance of HTML5 apps, or the value that brings, but I do wish Medium had broadened their focus.

You can find the app in iTunes. You can also find a review on TechCrunch.

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Comments


Paul March 20, 2014 um 9:55 pm

HTML 5 apps are still a bit slow for the perfect experience, plus they probably looked at their traffic and saw all the mobile hits were from iPhones (ours is 15% of the site is mobile/tablet with it mainly split between iPad/iPhone with Android making up 1% of that. Its a no brainer to concentrate on where your audience and advertisers are)

Nate Hoffelder March 20, 2014 um 10:43 pm

I thought that might be the case.

I can name a good alternative: an RSS feed. Medium still doesn’t have one so far as I can tell.


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