[rchaud]

No it wasn't. Blogspot was fine. TypePad was fine, as was WP. These are what powered the blogging boom of 2003-2010. They are all still around. If you were a regular writer, you would also have eventually developed a strong command of whatever platform you were on. A writer doesn't stop because the pen isn't as nice as they would like.

Meanwhile, Medium failed to create any kind of boom at all, despite its clean UX. They just kept the marketing/analytics cruft out of the product JUST long enough to attract a large enough audience, and then jacked everything up to 11. Standard bait-and-switch for 'free' technology products these days.