I’m not mad, just disappointed

Dear Medium, when I started my new year’s resolution, I thought you would be my partner in keeping it. My goal was to write and publish a blogpost every day of the year. What better app to help me with that than Medium, I thought. Until yesterday.

I was lying in bed, gathering my thoughts on my iPhone, as has become my new ritual to end the day. I had written my draft in Apple Notes as usual and was ready to copy it to the Medium app for final editing and publishing. So I opened the app, clicked on my profile icon, expecting to see the black “plus” button in the corner of the screen. Huh? Where is the button to create a new story? And why can’t I see my drafts? I restarted the app, no difference. I assumed it was a bug, so I thought maybe updating the app would fix it. It didn’t. How about restarting my phone? Still no button to create my story.

I didn’t get it. Did I reach some kind of writing limit? Do I need to pay to write more? I thought the paid membership was only for reading. I went to the mobile website. There I could at least see my drafts, but also here I didn’t see a create button. I don’t know if it was ever there, I never used the mobile website before. Now my only way to know what’s happening was to check Medium on a computer.

I got out of bed, took out my laptop and went to medium.com. Luckily there I saw I could still create a new article. I wasn’t locked out of having editing rights or anything. So I created a new story and copy-pasted my text from my notes. But before I published my story, I wanted to know what was happening. Why couldn’t I do this on my phone, as always?

I didn’t find anything on Google or Twitter, so I checked Medium’s help center. After some clicking around I found this message:

So that’s it: you decided to kill the story editor feature in the Medium app on iPhone. The feature that to me was the most important part of the app. A feature I relied on for my daily habit, and now it’s gone.

Am I mad? No, I’m just disappointed. I don’t mind change. But I do mind it, when you don’t communicate about it to me in advance. I thought maybe I had missed an email, announcing this change. But I couldn’t find any such message in my mailbox, nor in the notifications on Medium.

I get it. I get that sometimes you have to make decisions like these, to keep your product healthy. I work in designing software myself. Creating a good platform is not just about adding features, it’s also about removing things, to keep it nice and clean. Even when it’s a core feature to some (many?) users. But then at least give me a heads-up. Surely I wasn’t not the only one, writing blogposts on their phone?

Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me that I shouldn’t be writing blogposts on my phone. Or that I shouldn’t be publishing them from my bed. So let’s see if I can turn this problem into an opportunity to change my writing routine. I’m now typing this on my laptop (still in bed), and I understand what Medium meant with “our focus on an exceptional reading experience”. Writing is just different on a laptop. The speed with which I can get words on the screen is much closer to the speed with which I think them.

Will a change of my tool change my goal of publishing a blogpost everyday? Of course not. I published my blogpost yesterday and I’m writing this one now. And tomorrow, I will write another one. See you then.