honest question, how did Medium become so dominant for all blog posting so quickly ? The design is no doubt beautiful but there is nothing special. Curious why so many bloggers magically decided to publish there all of a sudden. I see tons of tech posts there now.
They remained 'elitist' for just the right amount of time, making people grave for the privilege to sign up. Svtble pulled the same stunt.
But medium timed things right and opened up to masses sooner. People signed up in droves. 'svtble' stayed elitist for many more months, but were medium forced their hands, but it was already too late.
I've been wondering this, too, and design/ease-of-use aside, the biggest argument I've heard (and observed) is the network effect. Even trivial Medium posts get at least a handful of favorites and 1-2 comments. A built-in audience is likely an easy sell for the majority of folks.
Medium started out with Twitter sign in, which means their early users were all Twitter "influencers". The way I look at it, it's a blogging wrapper layer built around Twitter social graph. When you sign in with your Twitter account you automatically follow everyone you follow on Twitter on Medium.
