The Netflix of ideas
For its next move, Medium should try platform-wide subscriptions
Remember when blogs used to use tip jars? Bloggers would ask committed fans to donate a small amount of digital change, a buck or two, to say they liked a post and wanted the writer to continue. Tip jars didn’t really take off. I wonder if any bloggers ever made any money from them.
This practice morphed into the more professional-sounding micropayments. The concept is the same: chucking a couple of quid in the direction of a journalist or publisher in exchange for a single piece of content. Blendle, a startup based in the Netherlands, is slicing up publishers’ output and charging small fees to consume each single piece. The service passed a million users in 2016, but the founder admits that it is still an experiment. (The Economist is available on Blendle.)
We don’t yet know whether Blendle is sustainable. But subscription-based publishers such as The Economist like to watch these experiments closely. So I was fascinated by Medium’s recent pivot. By ditching advertising as a business model, it did the sensible thing. Its bosses followed not just what I suspect are their own ideas that a direct financial relationship between a publisher and the consumer is better than one that involves advertisers. They also followed the data: advertising revenue for publishers is in decline. But of course every publisher on Medium was left wondering how else the platform is planning to make money.
I’d love to see Medium test a subscription that covers the whole platform.
Medium has become a rich ecosystem of political commentary, and smart analysis of society, technology and culture — among many other things. The engineers behind it have built such a brilliant user experience that people want to consume content on it, almost regardless of what that content is. When a link takes you to Medium, you breathe a sigh of relief, thinking: I’ll be able to read this and consider it carefully.
In creating an easy experience, Medium is following rich subscription-based platforms. Spotify is fun to browse around, follow playlists, and hop from jazz to pop to dance. Netflix is smooth: within seconds a user can be immersed in just the film or series they want, often thanks to suggestions driven by algorithm. Both of these services have managed to tackle the argument that would normally creep into my mind: but I can’t possibly ever consume all of this content, so why should I pay for so much? The ease with which I can get to what I do want makes me forget that I’m paying for far more than I could ever consume.
Medium could try something similar. Like it or not, the source of online content is becoming less and less important. Readers are promiscuous, grabbed by headlines and photos, hopping from one article to another through Facebook or Twitter, regardless of the original publisher behind it. With a platform-wide subscription model underpinning an ever-expanding content showcase, Medium could offer something for promiscuous users and loyal followers of specific publishers or writers.
One gamble is whether readers who want content from the publishers and writers they already follow on Medium will pay to see it. That might not be an issue because some readers already are paying, through Medium’s membership programme, covering publications such as Electric Lit.
Another gamble is whether people who are not currently following any publication or writer on Medium will be willing to pay. One way to encourage them would be to get more publishers that people follow elsewhere to migrate to the platform. But as part of its recent shakeup, Medium fired most of the staff who worked on bringing publishers on board. This may need fixing. If Medium wants to become the Netflix of ideas, it will need to do more to grab hold of the people who generate them.
Adam Smith is deputy community editor at The Economist.
