Noah Nelson explains what Medium is for after John Gruber wrote that he does’t get what Medium is.

Sometimes, however, it doesn’t pay to view the world through a macro lens. The forest can be missed for the kerning on the font that spells out t-r-e-e-s. This is what I believe is happening here with those who look at Medium and go “Huh?”

Ev Williams lays the case for Medium out succinctly. He calls it “a new publishing platform.” That’s pretty succinct right there. Williams elaborates on the point this way:

One of our goals was to make it dead simple to write and present a beautiful story without having to be a designer or programmer. We also sought to help great ideas quickly find the right audience — no matter who they came from.

Medium is beautiful. If you haven’t seen it, go take a look now. It is so gorgeous that I feel compelled to write and post on Medium. It is immensely satisfying to simply to see my writing appear on Medium.

TechCrunch reports that Appsfire will cease to be an app discovery service within a week. It will focus on mobile ad technologies instead.

Says CEO Ouriel Ohayon, it’s “something we should have done a while ago.”

But the company’s data base of App Store data, called “App Genome,” is not going to waste. It will power AppsFire’s ad engine instead. This means AppsFire will not serve ads for those apps already installed on a user’s device. “So what we did with the app was totally useful to what we’ll do now,” Ohayon tells us. “It’s more than useful. It is what we believe will make us unique.”

Technically, it will still be helping users discover apps through ads.

Business Insider reports that Facebook’s News Feed algorithm update is hurting social media marketers.

When the change went down, lots of people assumed it would be terrible news for publishers that write a lot about “memes” and publish other “viral” content – publishers like Buzzfeed and Upworthy. Then AllThingsD’s Mike Isaac reported that the Facebook executive in charge of News Feed, Chris Cox, has a personal distaste for those two sites. It seemed like their doom was imminent.

However, that was not the case.

A week or so after Facebook made its changes, one social media marketing agency, Ignite, analyzed 689 posts from 21 brand pages. Ignite found that in just one week, the number of people who saw posts from those brands declined by 44% on average, “with some pages seeing declines as high as 88%.”

Seems like Facebook doesn’t want companies to look for social media marketers to promote their brands on Facebook. Instead, they want businesses to use Facebook ads and pay to promote their posts.

Social media marketers will not be going out of business. They just need to include the cost of Facebook ads and post promotion in their services.

Apple Insider reports that Canaccord Genuity’s survey data showed that iPhone 5s has been the top selling smartphone at all four major US carriers since its launch in September.

Apple Insider reports on a November study by Changewave showing 72% of respondents want an iPad within the next three months.

Apple’s 72 percent share represents a 17-point jump since the agency’s August survey, conducted before the introduction of Apple’s new iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display.

All other tablet brands garnered only single-digit shares.

Mashable reports that Reddit has updated its user agreement to let it use user-generated content in anyway, even commercially..

You retain the rights to your copyrighted content or information that you submit to reddit (“User Content”) except as described below.

By submitting User Content to reddit, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your User Content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

You agree that you have the right to submit anything you post, and that your User Content does not violate the copyright, trademark, trade secret or any other personal or proprietary right of any other party.

Please take a look at reddit’s privacy policy for an explanation of how we may use or share information submitted by you or collected from you.

While it is understandable that Reddit needs to ensure it has the ability to continue hosting user content legally, the updated policy empowers the company to use user-generated content even for commercial uses.

If we are using a service for free, is it fair for the service provider to make money in this way? After all, they need revenue to continue making the service available.