24. Re/code Decode
I started my 100 podcasts project on Medium because there wasn’t anywhere else that felt like the right place to geek out over podcasts.
My friends and family, for the most part, don’t care about podcasts. When I post a link on Facebook to a podcast that really caught my attention, it’s usually met with crickets.
Twitter doesn’t feel right, either. I want to share and discuss in more than 140 characters. And people don’t click links on Twitter like they used to. The platform is evolving to be more multi-media focused to keep people on their site or in the app.
So that leaves me with trying a platform like Reddit and/or creating my own website or blog from scratch. Honestly, both those options sounded like too much extra work. I just want to share ideas with a community that cares.
The kind of problem I had was the reason Ev Williams created Medium three years ago. At least that’s how he describes it on the Re/code Decode podcast, where he was interviewed by Peter Kafka.
First, Ev wanted to create a place where it was exceedingly simple to start publishing. Don’t worry about designing a site, picking a theme or buying a URL. Just open a blank page and start writing.
On that front, I think it’s safe to say that Medium nailed it. The site’s clean design is acclaimed, and each semester I have no problem getting students to sign up and start publishing on Medium in minutes.
But Medium won’t succeed by just being Blogger with a better design.
Distribution is where Medium really wants to change the game. If I can read between the lines from his interview, it sounds like Ev didn’t want to live in a world where Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm largely determines what you see on the Internet. He wanted to create a place where you could find your own audience.
So how is Medium doing with distribution? The results are mixed.
Ev said that currently about 30% of Medium’s traffic comes from inside the platform itself. He didn’t elaborate on how those people discover content on the site, but I assume it’s some combination of email digests, following publications and tag searches.
But it’s clear if you spend any time on Medium that there’s growing discontent with writers failing to find an audience. Some are even getting disillusioned enough to leave Medium entirely.
This is the chicken-and-egg paradox that Medium has to solve. It’s trying to attract quality writers with the promise of a built-in audience, and a built-in audience with the promise of quality writing.
If Medium can’t grow fast enough to produce enough writing and readership to satisfy these needs, they risk alienating everyone for good.
On the podcast, Ev addressed his solution and it’s tied to their plans to monetize. It seems to involve “creating a marketplace” that pairs content creators with brands and media companies. Presumably, this will bring more attention to the platform.
“So you want to start looking at revenue as a way to help the product and encourage more people to publish on Medium because there’s a reason to do it,” Peter said in summary.
“Yeah. Yeah. So our first phase of looking at revenue for Medium is not for Medium Inc to make money, it’s to get professional creators paid,” Ev responded.
(Btw, does anyone wants to sponsor my publication?? What’s up, Gimlet Media or PRX or Squarespace Inc.??)
Ev elaborated that this type of paid writing can be promoted posts and branded content, but that it will also be more than that.
“We don’t want to limit ourselves to advertising,” Ev said. “I think there is a ton of content that can make money that people will pay for.”
Ev said that this step will come in “early 2016,” so stay tuned in the next few months. This could be a make or break moment for Medium.
In the meantime, Medium has quietly boosted engagement for writers in a way that has never really been done before on the Internet. You can recommend a story. You can submit it to an editor for inclusion in a publication. And perhaps most importantly, you can now highlight individual sentences in a story, which is the Medium equivalent to Facebook’s now-ubiquitous like button.
So why is it so important for Medium to get this right?
Let’s be real for a minute. All writers have egos. Writers are used to rejection and drafts that go nowhere. But what keeps them going is the need to express themselves, and the hope that it will ultimately mean something to someone, somewhere.
To write something is to put yourself out there. You are sharing your thoughts and words with the world, and you at least want to be heard.
Medium holds the promise to create a place where to write is to connect. It’s a world without the traditional gatekeepers of big publishers, editors or even a Facebook algorithm which so often can keep writers out.
But as writers are finding out, that new world can be just as uncertain, cruel and difficult to navigate.
