Long Medium
Given my vantage point as an investor, a former reporter, and a writer on Medium, I thought I’d share some of my own thoughts on the matter Ev speaks to above. As is often the case, there’s quite a bit of nuance…
The most outrageous thing you’ll see today!
Top 20 ways to do this amazing thing.
You won’t believe what happens next…
Publishing, as we know it, is broken. More specifically, publishing on the internet is broken. And more specifically still, publishing written content on the internet is broken. In an age of seemingly unlimited free content, this may be hard to perceive. But make no mistake, we’re heading down the path of a situation that’s untenable.
And you can see it right now if you look hard enough. Link-bait has given way to click-bait which has given way to slideshows which have given way to fake news. While tactics change and evolve over time, they’re all powered by the same thing: a business model predicated around the almighty pageview.
Sadly, the situation is not just going to resolve itself. Fundamentally, this is the reason behind Medium’s shift in strategy today.
You rarely hear about companies with years worth of runway making such hard decisions because it’s much easier to continue down a path until you’re forced to make those hard decisions. But strategic choices are obviously much more likely to succeed if made when on solid ground. And that’s exactly the situation in which Medium finds itself.
The numbers speak for themselves. 2 billion words written on Medium in the last year. 7.5 million posts during that time. 60 million monthly readers now. Pageviews galore. So step 2 is simply to slap some banner ads on the site, while step 3 is to profit, right?
The reality — again, perhaps hard to see in the midst of such numbers — is that it behooves no one to simply continue down a path if you know the end result isn’t ultimately going to be successful. And so, the prudent yet extremely difficult move is to swallow your prideful metrics and course correct.
And really, it’s just a decision to get back on the road that Medium initially set out upon.
For us as investors, it’s been easy to get caught up in numbers like the ones listed above. Frankly, it’s hard not to get caught up in them given the state of the publishing industry today and what metrics are held dear. And yet, numbers — even insanely impressive numbers — can deceive.
They can deceive when the goal is not actually to build the site with the most pageviews on the internet, but instead to fundamentally change the nature of publishing and reading. To do that, it’s not enough to simply be big. That’s part of the equation, to be sure. But just as vital is continuing to innovate on core product and experience while also building a sustainable model to make sure that all sides (publishers and readers) are deriving value — actual value — from the content, for the long-term.
Said more simply: Medium found itself straying down the path of least resistance, where legacy models reside.
To be clear, the core of Medium will remain intact. The elements that have gotten the network to where it is today are working and will continue to work. The moves today will simply refocus the team to continue exploring the correct model for publishing heading forward into an uncertain future.
Stepping back, from my own perspective, having come from this world, the past few months have been rather eye-opening with regard to the state of content. The obsessive political coverage. Questions of curation and bias. The rise of fake news. Things are simply not heading in the right direction. And the problems seem to be accelerating.
This is why we need Medium back on course. At some point, there will be a fundamental recalibration of the publishing model. Medium can be the catalyst for this, especially now with such a strong base in place. Again, this is the journey the company started out going after. And while such a road has what looks like shortcuts along the way, it’s important to stay on the road, no matter how long. In the long run, this will benefit all of us.
Update 1/5/17: A few more thoughts in the post below…
