The story of Medium, so far
As I write this article on Medium, there are many thoughts that go through my mind. As a writer, I can never stop to admire the simplicity of the editor nor the ease with which I can turn my thoughts to words. When I goto their home page and pick an article to read, never have I felt that I wasted my time reading it. There is a promise that I will learn something new from a different perspective. It’s more interesting to me that the experience of absorbing the information is quite similar to how it would have been in an actual conversation with the author.
Let’s go back to 1999 (the previous century 🤭). Those were the days when Blogger was the oxygen for Digital Bloggers around the world. It opened an equal opportunity for everyone to express their ideas and share their stories. Blogger was originally conceived by Pyra Labs, of which Evan Williams was a Co-Founder. He is the same person to whom we should say thanks to, for giving us this platform.
Blogger is still alive BTW, but it’s no one’s first choice these days. You can blame the fall of Blogger on Google if you like, a company that keeps shipping/acquiring products with no idea on where to take them. They hope that users will simply “Use it!” (because everything is free) and it might become the next big thing. Sorry Google, the world doesn’t work that way.
Well, Evan was quick to quit Google after they acquired Blogger from Pyra. He then went on to start Twitter in 2006, along with Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and the rest is history. So from short spurts of 140 characters, Evan decided it was time to give long-form writing a second chance. You can see the same thought stressed on the first line of his Welcome to Medium article.
Why the world needs Medium?
A great name they have, “Medium”, don’t you think so? A small but powerful tool that provides a fabric for writers all around the word to stitch their thoughts on to the world wide web.
But has Medium been successful in proving a means for livelihood for its content creators? Should Medium do that at all? A lot of important questions to ponder about. IMHO, from an ethical standpoint, Medium is trying to save the Internet.
“If you create a system that rewards attention, the easiest way to get attention is to be a bad actor. That underlies our media ecosystem, that underlies our political system, and it’s degrading society in so many ways.”
- Williams
The system he refers to here is Twitter plus the rest of the social media. And as for the bad actor, well, let’s take the example of Mr.Trump. We can all agree that his social media presence has been one of the reasons he made it to the White House. It ensured him undivided media coverage and also shaped the political conversation of an entire country. On Twitter, the character limit of posts oversimplifies the context of a tweet. This leaves room for guesswork, uncertainty, gossip, rumours and many unnecessary discussions. So yes, micro-blogging, in general, is twisting the political landscape of countries in an unprecedented manner and that was not foreseen 😥
More than half of the Internet’s traffic goes to clickbait articles from enterprises, politically biased news from news agencies and, of course, pornographic material. It’s 2019, and it’s sad to see the father of the Internet launching a campaign to save the web from abuse. In other words, the balance is on the darker side. There is a dearth of quality content.
That’s where the vision of people like Evan’s come into play. Medium promises a monetization model, which ensures the availability of good content (some of it would be for free) and that it will reward such authors. More importantly, it’s recommendation engine, and commenting system will suppress negative content and trolls. In short, it’s time to promote the good stuff. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I think the world needs Medium 😊
There is more to the story
While Evan and his team are busy trying to “fix” the internet, things are not all merry-merry for everyone. In the last three years, we have seen publications opting to switch to Medium to publish their articles over their own domain. Some have stayed, while many have left.
Different publishers have different reasons for their exit. Some of it can be attributed to the unexpected withdrawal of the Sponsored posts and Advertising strategy from Medium for monetisation. It was released in beta in 2016 and then 2017, out of nowhere, the team shut it down.
Evans had clearly, been against the idea from the beginning.
“It’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people,”
- said Williams, after the rollback
A sudden change in business outlook and the lack of a clear answer to “What Medium is trying to be?” are still keeping writers on the bay. The recent introduction of a paywall to get access to more streamlined-premium content seems to be making a bit of momentum. There are still barriers. The average payout of $93 for an author, doesn’t seem so lucrative for writers. And there is no clarity on how this payout is decided. Yet, there is the hope that the promise of original content will provide some light at the end of the tunnel.
👆a quick survey about your views on Medium.com, if you have time
The big question
The thing about Evans is that the man is not interested in generating revenue. That explains why he killed the Ads model and fired a third of his team before it began to flourish. There was potential; everyone knew that. But Evans wants to keep it clean. His vision for Medium is to be a democratic platform where anyone can share their voice, and the best of them gets heard. (Or undo the damage that 140 character posts have made to the Internet).
So no more ads 👏. The subscription model is up and running. The new feed looks like a distorted array of topics that are supposed to fall within my interests. To me, it seems to be the same direction, NetFlix is going. The idea is simple:
Just take our subscription and we will find or produce the content that you like
It’s a bit scary when they say; they know “what I like”. But that’s how the world is today. If you don’t tell the doctor, every symptom you have plus your past medical history, he/she may end up with a wrong diagnosis. So you have to release control of your likes-dislikes information to these conglomerates and pay for it!
Putting content behind a paywall is not a new idea. Charged, a tech newsletter seems to be doing a great job and so are these patreons. However, with Medium, it is a question of scale. Can they tap into the publishing market with a subscription model that is already saturated?
The answer is yes, provided Medium can become everyone’s “Obvious choice” for access to quality written content.
Netflix has over 130 million subscribers, and it’s growing faster than Wall Street predicted. They have close to 5500 full-time employees working across engineering, designing, production, marketing and what not, to give you a seamless on-demand streaming experience like no other. Of course, there is competition. There is Amazon, Hulu and even Youtube. But Netflix has won the title of “People’s Choice”.
I could go on to say if Netflix did it, so can Medium!
Nah, that’s just motivational material. It’s entirely two different industries with different goals and market size. But the point is, the road ahead is to become the default choice. That’s what Medium should strive to be.
Netflix started in 1997. They started their business with DVD rentals. If you read between the lines, you could say that theirs is an old and mature company that made the switch to the streaming subscription model at the right time. In comparison, Medium is still like a teenager trying to figure out what to do with life. They are definitely making some strong moves.
It’s going to take time to mould into a stronger player. The pace at which businesses see results from their strategies is way rapid than it was in 1997. So perhaps, the day is not far, where Medium becomes the Obvious choice for everyone. We will just have to wait and find out. I, for one, am sure rooting for them 🙌.
