Medium is a blogging platform started by Twitter founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stones almost three years ago in August 2012. It has since evolved into something of a hybrid between non-professional contributions and paid contributions and is considered to be an example of “social journalism.” Medium was created from scratch as a means of encouraging existing Twitter users to create longer posts than the standard 140-character limit. Medium has run into troubles during the early years with a relatively small following. Currently, Medium has a WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get,” pronounced “wissygog” and meaning that the layout on the screen as you edit and create posts is how the finished article will look) web user interface with a number of basic options. Posts can be recommended and shared by other people, not too unlike retweeting on Twitter, plus are sorted by topic rather than author.
However, when it comes to using services such as Medium on the Android platform, sometime the web browser option is functional but restrictive. It may be too slow, or perhaps you have to scroll around a lot to access all parts of the user interface. Sometimes, functions such as the media upload can be especially clunky working from a web browser and there is ample scope to improve this from an application. These are some of the reasons many companies invest money into developing, designing and marketing their applications, because it’s a better (cleaner, faster, simpler) experience for users, and this in turn encourages more use of the service! Medium is no different and the business has just confirmed that they are working on a new Android application and are looking for beta testers.
If you are an avid Medium user and you’d like to participate, the first thing you’ll need to do it request to join the private Google+ Community using the same account that you will be using on your Android device. The Medium team will approve you, which will also unlock the beta application in the Google Play Store, although this process may take up to an hour. Once you are able to, go ahead and download the beta application and sign in. However, the next stage is very important: you need to feed back to Medium via the Google+ Community your experience with the device. This way, you’re able to help Medium refine the application and shape future development. Medium’s blog on the subject makes the point that it’s important for customers to feedback positive and especially negative stories as this is how they will improve the application. Essentially, they wish to make the application the best it can be.