Hashtap vs. Medium: Comparing Blogging Platforms

Read about two fastest-growing blogging web services.

Blogging platforms such as Blogger, WordPress and others have been popular on the Internet for many years, and at least two new players are busting in on their territory: Hashtap.com and Medium.com.

Although both are used for similar purposes, they are completely different when you start comparing some of their best qualities and features. We looked at both services to help you figure out which features you need most.

Common aspects

You may have heard that Medium is very popular for people working in the tech and media industries but Hashtap is often used by people working in lifestyle, technology, personal blogs, media, psychology, cooking etc. This may be partly true, but what is for sure is that these two blogging platforms are some of the trendiest and fastest growing social media today.

Some of the most talented authors use Hashtap to create short, personal articles out of the full of details, long-form research pieces. Medium has close ties to Twitter, so many bloggers also tweet their Medium posts.

Subscriptions

On Hashtap, you can follow an author, tag, board (collection of articles, like board on Pinterest) and read new articles in one feed. While on Medium, you can follow a topic, publisher and author. There is no feed for new articles but there is a page with a random set of articles. In my opinion, this style of articles disposal aggravates the perception of content.

Trending

After analyzing Trending section on Hashtap and Popular on Medium section, you can see that articles that fall into the Popular on Medium were published either a year ago or two. On Hashtap, the articles that appear in the Trending were published not longer than 7 days ago, which makes them fresh and relevant when you browse this page.

Boards

Medium doesn't have boards. But Hashtap does. A board on Hashtap is an online folder where you can add articles. E.G. You signed on Hashtap and came across an article that you liked. Add that article to your board and read it later. Note, you can create an unlimited number of boards on Hashtap.

Boards can be public and private. With public boards everything is clear, they are available for all Hashtap users and for search engines. But, you can make them private at any time, thus they will be available only to you - the board creator.

Any user can follow any public board and see its articles at the "Subscriptions" feed. Everything is very simple.

Views

Medium doesn't have views indicator on articles or feed page, but just on Statistics page. On Hashtap users can see how many times an article has been read both in the feed and on an article page. The service takes into account many factors in order to determine whether an article has been read completely. "But, this indicator will appear in future updates", - the company said.

Design

Both Medium's and Hashtap's design looks simple. You get a profile avatar, a cover photo and a brief bio description to be displayed in your blog, that's it.

Blogging: Multimedia

Both platforms are known for their simple and intuitive formatting features. When creating a new article select the plus sign (+) to add photos, videos, links or break paragraphs. Select any text to define a heading or paragraph style, add quote, set alignment, or add link. Third-party services whose links turn into a media insert:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Coub
• Dailymotion
• Twitter post, video
• Facebook post, video
• Telegram
• Soundcloud
• Instagram
• Github Gists

Drafts are automatically saved and you can share them as draft if you want someone to make corrections or just check them before publishing.

Mobile App

Hashtap doesn't have a powerful blogging app yet. But you can use a mobile site, as well as desktop site version. With the Medium app, you can browse your home feed, breaking news and bookmarks, create posts from a mobile app or interact by following users, recommending posts and sharing them.

Summary

Both are great blog platforms, but there are others, which might suit your needs even better. Some of the “must read articles” have been published by IT authors from Medium and big media publishers which use Medium for publishing their content, so Hashtap is the winner when you need to find articles with different topics while Medium wins for the best-written content.