Medium has become a popular place for people who don’t run their own websites to post long essays and scathing exposes, in addition to producing some original journalism, all in an elegant interface that lends itself to longform reading.
Medium is toying with being the place for all your longreads with unreleased ‘Save to Medium’ feature
Update: Medium says it would not skirt publisher paywalls
Update: Medium says it would not skirt publisher paywalls
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
But a new experimental “Save to Medium” feature discovered by app sleuth Jane Manchun Wong suggests Medium has bigger aims — it might like to be the place you read all those lengthy web-based stories you don’t have time to read right away.
The unreleased “Save to Medium” feature looks like a clear competitor to Pocket and Instapaper’s popular read-it-later services, allowing you to quickly bookmark stories that you can then consume in its own interface whenever you like.
But unlike Pocket, the current experimental version of “Save to Medium” is getting some flak for doing something a little bit controversial: it’s scraping off the paywalls that publishers like The New York Times use to actually fund their journalism, according to Wong.
That’s just how the test works, though: Medium tells The Verge that any final version of a product like this wouldn’t do such a thing.
Which is probably a good idea, considering how Medium charges a $5 monthly fee to get through its very own paywall, one it would presumably like to keep on getting paid. It’s quite possible it plans to implement a feature like Pocket where you can log into the sites that you pay for — assuming it turns “Save to Medium” into a real product at all.
In the meanwhile, there’s an easy CEO-approved way to bypass Medium’s paywall: just follow a Twitter link to get there.
Correction, 11:11PM ET: Pocket (and Instapaper) also remove ads. Earlier, we added Medium’s comment that any final version of a feature like this would not skirt paywalls.
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