Empty text/input boxes are daunting. Thus, the context around them matters a lot.

Instagram said, "Whenever you see something beautiful in your daily life take a photo. Don't worry, we'll help make it look good!"

Twitter said, "What are you doing? What's happening? Seriously, just tell us quickly."

Quora said, "Do us a favor, answer this question?"

Medium is saying, "This is where people are sharing Airport Stories. Got one?"

Branch is saying, "Have a crazy product idea? Share it with this group!"

I think the next big publishing platform will *not* be the one that designs the sleekest text box. Rather it'll be the one that provides the best, most concrete context around it.

What do you think? How important is context to publishing?

The tricky thing is to provide context but retain flexibility. Provide handrails to your users, not a pen.

I think of them as prompts. What do you offer your user that helps them fill in the box you give them? How do you keep it from being overwhelming? One of the interesting things I found from years of blogging, for instance, was the more thought through a post was, the fewer comments it received. I always suspected it was because there were fewer places for someone to pop in and say something. How do you create enough of a framework to prompt their interaction but not so much so you scare them away?

Also, a lot of the context comes from the users themselves -- over time. The "what are you doing?" / "what's happening?" question helped a lot in the beginning I think but later people just understood what was for tweeting by watching others. (And creative users kept making up new uses.)

Note: Twitter provides no question today.

Do you think it's a good thing that Twitter provides no question, given that such a lower percentage of users tweet?

"Compose Tweet..." isn't the most approachable CTA, is it? At least, we faced this problem with Branch. Our button used to say "Compose" and nobody had any idea what to do!

Tumblr is a big omission from the list above. The use of explicit post types in conjunction with the dashboard was huge.

Rather than getting the order "okay, write important blog post now," you were given permission to post a quote, rather than write a post about a quote, or post a picture without commentary. The dashboard view supports that by reducing the gravity of any given post -- each item is one in a stream of many.

Also note Tumblr's de-emphasizing of the personal blog: the primary context is the multi-source dashboard rather than the single-source blog.

Medium is an interesting extension of this idea, with (as far as I can tell) no single-source context at all: you're contributing a "what" rather than building a "who."

Great points, Whitney. I'd argue the reblog also helps provide context on Tumblr. It means you don't even need to create your own thing from scratch. Instead, simply tack on a note to something you see in your dashboard!

It's a delicate balance of providing guidance on what makes good content and not over prescribing.

Remember TypePad? In addition to just being a blogging platform where you could write anything, they used to have a question of the day which helped people come up with something to write about that day. The problem was that that context was almost too constraining and many blogs ended up being just answers to their QOTD until fatigue set in.

In contrast, sending a LinkedIn InMail includes some concrete, but personalized, tips such as "mention people you know in common" and listing a few names.

Guide, but don't prescribe.

Josh, you called it "context", I might call it a "contract".

Social networks seem to have an implicit contract between the user and the network, defining on what terms the user provides content for the network.

Instagram: "You take a picture, we'll make it look good."
Twitter: "You come up with just a very short thought, we'll give it a context with other short thoughts."
Tumblr: "You post *anything*, we'll give you an audience."

The user fills the text box/takes the pictures/X's the Y because of the promised reward from the network's side of the contract.

All social networks want engagement, and they must provide something in exchange. Maybe the best social networks also have the clearest, most rewarding contracts.

Kevin, your TypePad example also reminds me of Formspring's growth a couple years back.

We tried a bunch of different things at TypePad (and Vox) to convert more occasional bloggers into more frequent ones. What we saw, though, is that there were more active bloggers that were more inclined to answer those questions...and unless you scored a direct hit on matching question to interests, it fell flat. (We were also trying to connect that to a native ad unit, with sponsored questions...and it worked well enough for advertisers with experimental social budgets (because of the natural reach of the bloggers that were answering it) to justify the spend.

That said, I'm kind of amazed there hasn't been a breakout hit that's essentially social madlibs. Could be a fun mobile app. (Free idea!)

OK, one more thought then I'll shut up for a while. The difference between what we were doing at TypePad v. what Medium is doing now is important in the broader lifecycle context of the two services. At TypePad when we introduced post prompts the service had been around for a while, and we were layering in something new to what was essentially "classic blogging." (Wide open, control your content, your layouts, your brand.)

Medium, in contrast, is a new service. Which is using the prompts to spark great content creation, and to help it define its brand. It's not general purpose publishing, it's purpose-driven publishing, where the prompts and collections are setting the context for both the writer and the reader. Very different thing.

Many people who have been involved in the web for a long time feel that forums haven't evolved, but they haven't died either. Vast rock pools of special interest from skyscrapers to politics are fed via channels based on a software model from the mid 90s. Forums tend not to answer a specific question but a specific type of question: What's you opinion on? And there's evidence from polling firms that people engage better when explicitly asked their opinion vs answering a question factually.

Just my my opinion, my 2c, but I feel that the generic question type that hasn't been addressed by questions in publish boxes and provides an opportunity has a form of something like a statement or link, followed by a text box that simply says: 2c?

David: isn't that generic question type (statement or a link, followed by a simple text box) basically what Tumblr does? And, splitting apart the call (link) and response (2c) -- Reddit?

Fair, point. And true that Reddit is the closest to the forum model. But its also like something from the days of forums, built by engineers with no designers involved. I hope it isn't the state of the art.

I think Branch has a better opportunity to innovate and I love the design sensibility, but it maybe needs the moderation voodoo which I've never been able to decipher to be perfectly honest.

I think the biggest shift in online "publishing" isn't the text box or the context of why to write but the audience itself. What has made twitter, Facebook, Instagram so powerful is that people know who can/will see something when they write. While a blank text box from services like blogger, type pad is daunting, I feel like the most daunting part for most regular folks has been getting people to read after you write. Facebook and to some extent twitter fix this. Now medium is a great new take to bring audience along with an idea of what to write. Forums historically have had this in part, but with strong community norms. While the question matters, where it goes and getting feedback probably matters most