Medium Is The New Steemit
Last night I e-mailed my friend Markus Maiwald some feedback on the virtual community that he’s designing. In his design there’s some mixture of democracy (voting) and markets (spending). I mentioned that there’s already a virtual community that is purely democratic (Reddit) and a virtual community that combines both democracy and markets (Steemit) but there isn’t one that is purely market based.
This morning Ev Williams invited me to “become a founding member of Medium”. Basically I can pay $5 dollars a month and get some perks…
We’ve been working on a whole new reading experience, which I’m excited for you to see. It’s based on the premise that, instead of yet another never-ending feed, people would be much happier with a limited set of carefully curated stories, chosen by experts among topics we care about. Something that is completable, satisfying, and puts you in control.
The stories on my feed will be carefully curated by experts… yet I’ll be in control?
We will be routing 100% of the revenue from founding members (those who sign up in the first few months) to writers and independent publishers who have important work to do. Those who have hard-won expertise, do exhaustive research, and think deeply. Those who make us all smarter. Those who maximize our understanding of the world but don’t necessarily maximize clicks — and, therefore, are at a disadvantage amongst the highly optimized algorithm chum being slung by the truckload by low-cost content purveyors.
“We” will be allocating 100% of the revenue from founding members to valuable producers?
Corporate advertising budgets become the primary funders of our information providers. No matter how skilled or well-intentioned, ad-driven publishers are rewarded on their ability to capture attention and even, at times, to weave a particular corporate-driven narrative. Not to provide informed perspectives, be thorough, or even be factually correct. But to capture attention. As cheaply as possible. For a few fleeting seconds. Click, click, scroll…
There is no way to fix this dynamic until we demand better — and decide to pay for it. We need a system that funds stories and ideas not just based on their ability to attract attention, but on their value to readers. This is the system that Medium is building, and as a founding member, you’ll get to help tell us what’s most valuable and how we spend that money.
If I became a founding member, then I’d get to help tell Medium what’s most valuable? But how, exactly, do I get to communicate my valuations?
I clicked on the link for the Partner Program…
With the launch of our new subscription, Medium Membership, our goal is to fundamentally change the negative feedback cycles of publishing on the internet that we’re all so familiar with. By rewarding creators based on the value they deliver to readers — knowledge, insight, perspectives — rather than to advertisers — eyeballs, clicks, attention — we can make space for substance to thrive.
Well yeah, an advertisement really can’t know the amount of value that we derive from an article.
We’ll be directly investing our member subscription revenue into quality content and amping up that investment over time, based on what our members are reading and recommending.
Ouch. Medium defines quality according to what people read and recommend (vote for). So basically, instead of getting paid to produce valuable content, partners get paid to produce popular content. Well now there are two Steemits. But we don’t even need one Steemit!
If I’m going to pay $5 dollars a month, then I should really be able to use my $5 dollars to communicate exactly how valuable I think a story is. The more of my $5 dollars that I’m willing to spend on a story, the more highly I value it.
Value is a function of people’s willingness to pay (WTP). I shared this basic economic knowledge with Williams two years ago. But either he didn’t see it… or he didn’t understand it… or he understood it but disagreed with it… or he understood it and agreed with it but wasn’t able to apply it to Medium. Since he never responded, your guess is as good as mine.
Just to be on the safe side, here I am sharing the same knowledge with Williams again. I’m also sharing it with you and Markus. Honestly I’d be really surprised if Williams responds this time. I won’t be very surprised if you respond. But, chances are that even if you agree with me, you won’t be in a position to directly apply the knowledge to a community. It’s a different story with Markus! It’s also a different story with Autumn Cote. But, unlike Markus, so far she’s shown precious little interest in actually knowing the value of things.
Your story was about our freedom to decide which opportunities we are willing to sacrifice. In other words, it was about opportunity cost. Opportunity cost isn’t difficult to understand. What is difficult to understand is the benefit of everybody deciding for themselves, with their own money, which trade-offs are acceptable. In other words, it’s difficult to understand the benefit of markets.
In theory, Williams could turn Medium into a market. Clearly he hasn’t done so. Evidently from his perspective, the opportunity cost is too high. My perspective is the complete opposite. From my perspective, the opportunity cost of Medium not being a market is impossibly high. Every single member loses the incredibly valuable opportunity to determine and see and know the true value of stories. We are robbed of the opportunity to know what’s truly important to each other.
Like I said, you’re probably not in a position to apply this knowledge to a virtual community. But you are certainly in a position to articulate this knowledge to at least three people who are in a position to apply this knowledge to a virtual community.
You write well enough so it’s certainly possible that you could do a better job than I have of articulating the benefits of markets. So what would be the benefit of giving Medium subscribers the freedom to use their fees to communicate their valuation of stories? Clearly it would be exactly the same benefit as Netflix giving its subscribers the freedom to use their fees to communicate their valuation of their favorite content.
