Medium, a blog-publishing platform, has been called (by others and by Medium itself) the “best writing tool on the web.” Anyone can publish and it looks good; “elegant” is the word most often used. If you want to read something that clearly explains what Medium is, check this Atlantic article out.
Medium has been around now for more than two years and seems to be going strong. The platform clearly speaks to our need to write and be read, even if we don’t get paid, and to do it with style. All kinds of people use Medium, writers such as former NPR product manager and revolution tweeter Andy Carvin (here’s his latest on human apathy in Starbucks) and Joshua Davis who founded longform site Epic and uses Medium to promote his articles (here’s his most popular Medium post that is a repost of an Epic story about a guy hired to track down stolen gold in Peru). You can create a publication within the publication, such as Matter or The Nib. And there is also a bunch of junk from people who like posting junk.
Somehow, among all the other storytelling platforms out there, Medium has managed to float to the top of the pack. But how does it survive? Stories are free to read without any intrusive advertising. Most writers get paid in exposure rather than real money, though apparently, a few undisclosed writers get paid to post. And then there is the Medium staff, at least 50 people, who I presume, get paid to work there. It has never revealed it business model, but that doesn’t seem to affect its popularity. And since it was created by two of Twitter’s co-founders, one of whom also founded Blogger, we can guess they probably know what they are doing. Here’s a Guardian article that says just that.
So what’s next for Medium? Here’s an article on the future of Medium, published on Medium. It mostly sings the praises of publishing on Medium, but also raises some good points. Here’s an article that tells us why we should publish on Medium (answer: audience). And here’s a guy who wants people not to use Medium (answer: no money).
Despite all the online storytelling sites popping up every month it seems (Epic, Big Roundtable, Latterly, Deca), we have yet to find a business model, at least for longform, that works. Read this article about the failure of Byliner and the creative business of longform journalism. Medium seems to be on to something, at least as a company if not its unpaid writers, and at the very least, is proving that we still want to read.