Medium’s Collaboration Tools Also Act As Its First-Ever Invite System

As we reported on Tuesday, publishing platform Medium added some new collaboration tools, allowing your friends to add notes to your pre- and post-published articles. It’s a nice way of getting feedback when you want it, especially if it would have been helpful before sharing your thoughts with the world.

One thing that the company left out, though, was that since you can invite any friend to collaborate on your posts via a link, once they actually post a note, they’ll be able to use Medium, too. This was confirmed in an email sent out by Ev Williams and company today to its members:

Also, here’s something: They will then have access to write on Medium, as well. So, for the first time, you can invite people to Medium. (They just have to help you first.)

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This is interesting for two reasons: it’s a clear incentive for your friends to participate in the writing and refining of your posts and it’s a perfect onboarding experience for new users to add notes before they ever write a post of their own. Killing two birds with one stone is smart, and it’s a way for the team to get more people using the service in a controlled way.

Since there hasn’t been an answer to “how can I join Medium?” until now, other than being invited by the team or being a Twitter employee, this now serves that purpose.

Start writing.

[Photo credit: Flickr]