Ev Williams is best known as one of the twitter co-founders alongside Biz Stone
but he's also the person behind the popular online publishing platform
Medium.com. Founded in 2012, Williams announced that Medium was a new place on
the internet where people share ideas and stories that are longer than 140
characters and not just for friends and was
designed for little stories that make your day better and manifest those that
change the world whilst it helps you find the right
audience for whatever you have to say. The platform through its partner program
enables its writers or content creators to be paid depending on how deeply the
readers read their posts. If readers spend more time on your
articles you're paid more thanks to the subscription fee of five dollars a month.
But the question is often asked is: What is Medium?
And everyone seems to have a slightly different answer.
We use the term online publishing platform, which is what Wikipedia settled on.
Medium is a blogging platform which
combines articles from well-respected editors and paid writers
and people just wanting to put their thoughts into writing.
There's no specific focus with articles about anything and everything
and with very few adverts, it creates a clean and unobstructed view of written media,
something which is hard to come by today.
They also have the luxury of diverting negative article feedback onto the writer,
as the platform doesn't take accountability
for what's being written but taking praise when articles are lauded.
On August 14 2012 when Ev Williams
launched Medium, he wrote "on Medium you can contribute
often or just once in a blue moon and without the commitment of a blog and
either way you're publishing into a thriving pulsing network
not a standalone website which you alone are responsible for keeping alive".
But others such as Marco Arment, the lead developer and CTO of Tumblr since its
inception in 2007 until 2010, thinks that those who publish on Medium
rather than their own personal blog give up control not just on their hard
work but also on their personal brand similar to when you buy something from
Amazon, you never really know where it's coming from.
As far as other people are concerned, Medium is just a place where
well-written articles are sometimes available.
But what is their mission or why was it thought up in the first place?
The goal of the platform is to optimize the time spent reading articles on the site
and is almost seen as the YouTube for blogging
where people can write about anything
and grow a following using a well-built platform that pushes your posts out to a
wider audience without needing SEO knowledge.
But whilst Medium have created a simple and stylish platform
unlike YouTube, only a small fraction of people are actually paid.
Medium does look the part though, with no advertising it's easy to find what you
want to read without being bombarded by ads blocking half the screen
like other well-known publications. Whilst this works for the reader
it shows why only a few people are paid. But the website is popular with even
Jeff Bezos using the platform to reveal the national enquirer's efforts to
blackmail him in a one-off post which still enabled him to write his own version of the story.
However as the years have gone by, what
was once considered to be game-changing in the blogging world,
there's been significant decline with the platform, seeing popular publications
such as Bill Simmons' 'The Ringer' and Backchannel come and go.
The Ringer moving to Vox Media before being bought by Spotify
and Backchannel which left for Wired, has since been purchased by Condé Nast.
Their reasons stemmed from the fact that they felt Medium was no longer as
focused on helping publications like ours profit
which was cemented when Ev Williams confirmed in 2017 that Medium did not
plan to use banner ads as part of their revenue model.
The paywall that's been introduced now blocks many free users from the best content,
creating a bad user experience.
Imagine YouTube blocking off anyone with over a hundred thousand subscribers.
You'd have very little left to watch. Despite the negatives, the user base has
grown from 60 million readers in 2016 to 120 million today and there's no
doubt that many people enjoy what Medium has to offer.
Some even suggest that their audio articles could enable everyday bloggers
to launch their own podcast without the need for an expensive studio
which would open the door to many amateur creators.
The issue however is that people who understand SEO are now just using Medium
to redistribute their work to a larger audience
gaining more exposure, which cheapens the Medium brand.
Medium is now 8 years old and has raised $132 million
in venture funding and it's still not profitable.
But in an era where all the biggest companies seem to be making losses year
over year perhaps Medium stands a chance of
succeeding in the future. Thanks for watching.