Medium quietly opens to all, requires Twitter to join and Chrome, Firefox, or Safari on the desktop to write

In its weekly digest email, publishing platform Medium today quietly announced that registration is open to all. You’ll still need a Twitter account and an email address, but you no longer have to be invited to sign up for the service.

While there is no official announcement on Medium’s website, a blog post titled “How Do I Post?” offers a bit more detail. Head to medium.com/m/signin and sign up with your Twitter account. You’ll need to verify your email address by clicking the link in the email sent to you, and after that you’ll see a button on the Medium homepage that says “Request writing access.”

Click it to start writing. Here’s what it looks like:

There are a few catches, however. Post creation on Medium is currently only possible on three desktop browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Safari. That means Internet Explorer and Opera users are out of luck, and there’s no telling when support might be added.

As for mobile devices, post creation is also not available. You can post on the Web, but not from your smartphone or tablet. Medium wouldn’t give timing for when this will change, but it did say “We’re working on this.”

Not everyone is excited. Here is Foursquare’s BPLewis, who tipped us off on the newsletter:

Oh well this will only degrade the already amazing quality of writing on Medium. pic.twitter.com/i7O1qoq4dl

— BPLewis (@BPLewis) October 25, 2013

We have contacted Medium for more information and will update this article if and when we hear back. Update: We heard back but Medium merely confirmed what we already know. “Yes. Anyone can come to Medium, sign in, verify their email address and start writing.”

See also – Evan Williams’ Medium snaps up Kickstarter-funded journalism startup Matter, 6 months after launch and Twitter founder Ev Williams opens up new publishing platform Medium to all Twitter employees