Medium is an American online publishing platform founded by Evan Williams and launched in August 2012. It is owned by A Medium Corporation and represents a blend of social journalism, combining contributions from both amateur and professional writers, as well as exclusive blogs and publications. Medium is frequently seen as a platform for blogging.
Williams, who previously co-founded Blogger and Twitter, developed Medium as a tool for publishing longer pieces of writing than Twitter’s character limit allowed.
In March 2021, Medium announced a shift in its publishing strategy and business model, reducing its in-house publications and enhancing support for independent writers.
History
2012–2016
Evan Williams, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, created Medium to enable users to create longer posts. Upon its launch in 2012, Williams remarked on the lack of progress in improving the quality of online content.
By April 2013, the platform had 30 full-time employees, and by August, Williams noted that while the site was still small, he was optimistic, aiming to make it easy for thoughtful writers to publish their ideas.
Medium focused on maximizing the time visitors spent reading rather than increasing its audience size. In 2015, Williams criticized the metric of unique visitors as meaningless for Medium’s goals. By May 2017, Medium.com had 60 million unique monthly readers.
Medium maintained an editorial team with professional editors and writers, also serving as a publisher for various publications. In May 2015, Medium significantly cut its editorial budget, leading to layoffs across several hosted publications.
In 2017, Medium introduced paywalled content accessible only to subscribers and began compensating authors based on the number of “claps” and the time readers spent on their articles.
Medium generated revenue through native advertising and sponsorships of article series. A failed attempt to introduce advertising led to the layoff of 50 employees in January 2017 and the closure of offices in New York and Washington, D.C.
In 2016, Medium acquired Embedly, a platform for rich media embedding. That year, the platform saw 7.5 million posts published and 60 million readers.
2017–Present
In March 2017, Medium launched a $5 per month membership program, providing access to premium content, with authors receiving a flat payment per article. Some publications left the platform following this change.
In January 2021, Medium acquired the social ebook company Glose, and in November 2021, it acquired both the graphic design tool Projector and the audio learning platform Knowable. Employees of Medium announced plans to unionize in February 2021, but the effort fell short by one vote in March.
On July 12, 2022, Evan Williams stepped down as CEO, transitioning to chairman of the board. Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Coach.me, took over as CEO on July 20, 2022. In August, Stubblebine announced the layoff of 29 staff members.
User Information and Features
Medium does not publicly share official user statistics. In 2016, it was estimated to have around 60 million monthly visitors.
The platform offers a WYSIWYG editor with various formatting options and allows users to sign up using Facebook, Google, or email.
For $5 per month or $50 per year, Medium offers a subscription service providing access to exclusive content and audio narrations of popular stories. The Medium Partner Program pays writers based on the time members spend reading their work.
Starting May 2024, Medium banned AI-generated content from being paywalled or earning payouts through the Partner Program.
Tag System
Posts on Medium are organized by topics rather than by authors. The “clap” system allows readers to show appreciation, influencing author compensation.
Publications
Medium hosts shared spaces called publications, where articles and blog posts can be assigned editors and saved as drafts. In 2013, Medium acquired the science and technology publication Matter. In 2014, it launched the music publication Cuepoint and the technology publication Backchannel, which Condé Nast acquired in 2016.
In 2016, Medium hired the founder of Human Parts, a publication focused on personal stories. In 2019, Medium acquired The Bold Italic and launched new publications like GEN, OneZero, Marker, Elemental, Focus, Zora, and Level.
In 2020, Medium introduced Momentum, focusing on anti-racism and civil rights.
Board and Corporate Governance
As of June 2020, Medium’s board members included Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Josh Elman of Greylock Partners, Ben Horowitz, and Colin Kaepernick.
Initially, Medium adopted holacracy as its governance structure but abandoned it in 2016 due to coordination challenges and negative public perception.
Reception
Upon its launch in 2012, Medium received positive reviews for its quality content and Creative Commons licensing options, but also faced criticism for unclear service expectations.
Censorship
Medium has faced censorship in various countries, including Malaysia, Egypt, China, Albania, Vietnam, and Russia.
Software Architecture
Medium’s initial technology stack used various AWS services, including EC2, S3, and CloudFront. By 2017, its infrastructure included additional AWS services, with image servers written in Go and main application servers in Node.js.
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