Jeffery Zeldman on whether or not Medium is a death knell of the open web:
You may think I exaggerate, but I’ve heard more than one respected colleague opine that publishing in Medium invalidates everything we independent content producers care about and represent; that it destroys all our good works with but one stroke of the Enter button.
I’ve even had that thought myself.
But isn’t the arrival of a new-model web publication like Medium proof that the web is alive and healthy, and spawning new forms of creativity and success?
I have no issue with people publishing on Medium. I am skeptical of it as a business. I’m also scared that one day it could be acquired and/or disappear entirely — making it, perhaps, not the best place to put your content if you want it around for years and years. However, if you publish something on Medium (or any other publication) that’s fine. Just know there are consequences.
The primary downside to publishing on any site other than your own is your control over whether or not it will be where you put it a year from now. Second, perhaps, is that any attention received by what you publish may well benefit the site you’ve published on far more than you.
Just one example of this is when Dave Pell published something on Medium rather than his own site and it got pretty popular. And he regretted it.
