Shutting Down Smedian & Signal
Long live Penname & ManyStories
After six years, I have decided to shut down Smedian, the platform that made it incredibly easy for writers to request to contribute to Medium publications and for publications to grow their content teams. Smedian also provided the source of truth for the leaderboard of thousands of publications on Medium.
The following is a quick message about why I’ve arrived at this decision.
Read: Smedian: The Tool All Medium Editors & Writers Needed.
Read: Introducing Signal by Smedian
Unfortunately, I’ve also been forced to shutter Signal for operational reasons as Twitter’s policies would not allow me to scale it beyond its current feature set.
Given financial constraints I needed to abruptly shut it, along with everything under Penname that did not have a path to scale and profitability, down. After 6 years since the launch of Smedian, and the start of the Penname umbrella, the only one that remains is ManyStories.
ManyStories has an immense amount of potential for helping writers gain mass distribution as well as access to clients in the future, so I will continue to support that. I needed to shut everything down in order to focus on the most beneficial and most promising for all stakeholders: ManyStories.com.
As much as I wish I could have given more notice to users and customers, I did not have the bandwidth in my current personal and work life to carry that out before yet another billing cycle passed. I had delayed this step for too long, and it was time to pull the plug on these projects that I loved and avidly used myself.
I thank you and everyone who used and supported these services, and I hope you will continue to support Penname as we figure out the future, leading with ManyStories.com.
