We previously featured the beautifully designed writing/moment sharing platform Hi, taking it for a test drive last July during its private beta period. Just by chance I happened to visit the site yesterday only to be met with a brief server error. Today I know why, as the service is back online, now available for everyone.

While Hi is an interesting and useful service, observing its beta period has really taught me the value of beautifully designed content. The typography and layout of articles on Hi are so good, that even you just added Lorem Ipsen text and a picture of your butt, it would probably still look incredible [1]. I suspect people want to write there because it’s a container that enhances their writing instead of just containing it. The beta period has also nurtured Hi’s community features, which have been improved leading up to launch.

Having said all this, I confess that I’ve not written anything on Hi for a while. I still prefer to own my content myself, in a way that works for me. But all the same, I do have some regrets that my stuff is still not as pretty as Hi.

I encourage you to read co-founder Craig Mod’s typically epic welcome post, which gives an overview of the service far more eloquent than anything I could pen here. So go read it.

I started perusing it in Pocket, but then I realized what I was doing and happily opened it in Safari instead.