I'm watching the video between Joi Ito and Evan Williams talking about me. Technically Medium is no worse than other systems, and lately has become better, because it now has an API, as Ev is mentioning right now in the video as I'm listening to it.
The reason I focus on Medium is because it is becoming the default platform for people writing blog posts. But Medium is actually part of the open web.
Joi is now asking the right question. It would be great if Medium directly supported Instant Articles as-is. Interop is great. Many ways to do the same thing sucks.
He doesn't need to talk to Facebook to support IA. It's an open format.
The problem with the way Medium API works is that you can't flow updates to it. So if I make a change later the update doesn't show up on Medium.
BTW, I heard a touch of irony in Ev's voice as he questioned whether Medium was really the 800-pound gorilla in this space. They aren't, Facebook is. But Medium is still drawing a lot of good stuff away from the open web, and believe it or not that's okay with me, as long as it can be shared back into rest of the web, exactly as Joi was discussing. That's what was so great about what Facebook did, they said the content shared with them through IA can be shared anywhere, as-is, without modification. I think this is actually smart, following through on the Central Park analogy -- if they feed back to the open web, there's at least a chance of new interesting stuff being created outside the silos. There's certainly no way anyone but a FB employee can directly add value to the FB platform and same with Medium. But the open web, by definition, is not in any way exclusive. Anyone can do whatever they like, without permission from Ev or Zuck.
Anyway the big pieces relevant to this conversation are: