Medium Raises $57M
techcrunch.com
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I like Medium as a platform but there doesn't seem to be much beyond the occasional interesting essay or startup humblebrag puff piece about why culture is more than free donuts or whatever.
My problem with Medium is there is no way of establishing a reputation for quality. If everyone can post there then you're gonna run into some garbage, no matter what the sorting algorithm says are the "hot" stories. So without site wide quality control all it'll take are a few bad articles to bring down the perceived average quality.
So then what's in it for the writers? Build up an audience on a convenient, erm, Medium, then...leave? How else will they make money?
Medium, in my mind, faces the same problem as YouTube did (still does). Their entire growth potential is subject to them transitioning from a content hosting platform to a content destination. YouTube will not survive if it remains a portal for people to link & host videos or search for specific pieces of content. They must train users to browse YouTube.com (as one does Facebook) and rely on it for consistent content delivery. Amazon has managed to do this. Medium will have to do so as well. Once they have their users captive, they can offer many VAS ranging from sponsored posts to premium pay-per-read content.
I had organized my subscriptions into a series of groups, which was a pretty hidden feature that they subsequently removed.
I have since replicated that by putting everything into a series of folders in the google replacement RSS reader, innoreader, I have been using.
YouTube sort of gets me to stay on the site by autoplaying vaguely similar videos and randomly inserting totally off topic videos that match my previous viewing history.
I feel like this scatterbrained approach to throwing videos at users does very little to foster go to the site out of the blue habituation, though it does make the site somewhat sticky once you are there.
I don't know if Medium can do anything similar to get the habituation working, maybe and editor's choice curation system, but that seems to fail compared to aggregators like HN or reddit. They could probably promote some stickiness by appending full stories right at the bottom of existing ones via infinite scrolling, if that even works better than just having the typical 'click here to see the top 10 secrets of X' junk at the bottom.
Here's a video by a youtuber about all this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4
I believe the idea of moving towards a more AI/ML based recommendation system is interesting because it frees Youtube from the burden of defining what is worthy of being featured (and featuring everything that's relevant to each particular user). In a way it could democratize content discovery. But I don't see it working as well as it could be.
I have a feeling that Youtube may want to be able to promote certain youtube "stars" because, let's be real, they are the ones driving revenue. But I chose to believe a world where content discovery is more fair is possible.
I will say that this has less to do with the shitty way subscription works nowadays. The idea behind that is: if users want to follow certain creators, they should be able to. Moving that towards a AI/ML system seems just inefficient at achieving that goal. I don't know the rationale behind the decision here.
I thought that had already happened. That's how I use YouTube and I know the younger generation is doing it as well.
More relevant is how often you come across Medium articles outside of the context of HN - occasionally via twitter, and that's about it.
Still, they must have been able to show something is going right.
That isn't sardony. There are many startups/VCs who use Medium solely because they want to be "thought-leaders" unironically. As a result, the quality of Medium posts is highly variable.
I think medium is an excellent service. the trending articles definitely needs work though
I also like that you can easily have your essay included in other peoples publications [1] or ask if you can include someone elses in yours.
I would pay for access to good publications but I am not really your average user.
[1] https://medium.com/swlh/the-problem-with-problems-47ee63bb35...
Medium is content-first. All blogs should arguably be content-first, very few are. Most wordpress blogs a) look like crap, b) obscures content, and c) renders slow, in order to accommodate the design that contributes to a) and b).
I'm not a writer, but from what I understand, the back-end is also content-first, writing first -- simple, elegant, no clutter.
The lack of theming is a bonus. Just as design/layout of an essay in New York Magazine is largely out of your hands, and taken care of by the publisher, so it is with Medium. Evidence suggests that the vast majority of writers are better off that way (see point above).
Ghost and many of the static site generators offer similar benefits, but with some caveats: they all need theming, and I'm not sure if any of them really come with something that in sum is as good as/better than Medium. Personally I think even Medium is a bit heavy -- but it is way better than then current mess that is Blogspot.
If your goal is to write/publish and not worry too much about design/layout you could do a lot worse than Medium. Many do.
I wouldn't be surprised if Medium differentiated/launched curated sub-sites/"magazines" that featured content from Medium. They could have some premium stuff that is authored by only paid authors, mix and match, and have a X articles/month-for-free model a la New York Times etc.
If the can get a large number of writers, and a large sub-section of good/great writers -- monetizing shouldn't be that hard. I hope. And I'm guessing that's what the investors hope too. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Medium turns out to be one of the first "native digital" publishers -- embracing the strengths of digital distribution, rather than fighting it. Eg: maybe people are willing to pay for content, and one can simply rid oneself of the dependency on advertising.
We'll see.
I don't think Evan have a good track record of turning startups into profitable businesses, but he does have some great product ideas.
I really hope this one will be good for him but like you I have my doubts.
From the writer's perspective: 1) interface is clean and easy to write on - easy to format things, embedd video, embedd pictures, etc 2) easy to share drafts and get edits from others 3) 5%-10% of traffic comes internally from medium.com, so helps with distribution 4) SEO's well and works out of the box without me having to set anything up.
PS - I work at Greylock Partners which invested in Medium but I didn't have any say with the investment decision nor do I have to use Medium. I just like writing on there.
Just read the notes from the first two classes. I think you are doing a great job of carrying on the Blake Masters tradition of accurate, well-organized, easy-to-read notes. Please keep it up, and thank you!
C'est la vie.
Actually, I think that's kind of the point.
But I like the curated front page/top articles. I will go there to specifically check that page out when I have a spare moment.
There's probably a price point that I would pay to have that list sent to my inbox daily.
Exactly! :)
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/war-is-boring-is-moving-417...
Step 2: Wait ten years. Then, repeat step 1 with similar idea but different branding (Medium).
At this rate, we have about 6 years until Ev does step 2 for Twitter. Maybe it'll be called Tiny :)
To be mean to him: Deciding to split Foursquare into Yelp-lite and a shitty social network was a terrible, terrible idea.
1. What I percieve to be excessive use of JS. You can't even load a blog post there (well, at least, couldn't last time I visited a dot-blogspot site) without an on-page spinner and a bunch of stuff apparently happening in the background.
2. The tld-redirect crap. Admitedly, I had actually thought a similar mechanism to be benefitial prior to seeing an actual implementation of it but I mean, come on, does this not annoy others? What's the advantage of that anyway? Google is capable of geographical load balancing with IP addresses alone just fine, what's the deal?
Disclaimer: These are my end-user reactions. I have never operated at the scale Blogger does so there may be reasons I am not aware of.
For me at least, I think it's much easier to keep track of places you've gone with your own reviews with swarm. And foursquare for finding new places you would want to go. I'm sure they could have built it in such a way that would only need one app, though I can't complain too much about the split.
It helps to get re-acquired once you have all the existing connections and the acquiring company knows you're not snake oil and aren't screwing them over.
There have been multiple Google->Startup->Google loops as well, but many of those are an acquihire-as-safety-net when the too hyped startup by too eager employees falls flat on its face.
Some companies end too early because the technology or capital wasn't there to let it get to its full potential. Also, those founders tend to be the people who understand the space the best because they're the ones with the most experience.
Speaking of Blogger...what's hapened to it? Wordpress, Tumblr and Medium are perhaps the three most popular blog platforms. Blogger, however, seems to have completely fallen off the radar. If you go to blogger.com, you don't even get a landing page for the service, just a Google sign-in. This gives me the impression that Google doesn't want to promote it or encourage new sign-ups. Perhaps they don't know what to do with it? Or perhaps they'd like to retire the service but can't because of all the sites and users that currently exist?
Google bought it. RIP.
But, if anybody deserves internet funny money, it's ev. He's the most genuine and least evil founder of internet things I've seen.
> Understanding Blogger as we did at the time — as a software tool for creating and publishing web sites — we found ourselves in the race many software makers know well: Add features, get more users. Competitor adds more features, lose users. (Marketing and others factors have some effect, depending on the market. In blogging, that was minimal.)
(skipping a few paragraphs)
> Chris Dixon had a great post a while back — Come for the tool, stay for the network — describing how, unlike Twitter, some platforms started out with tool value and transitioned into network value (which, ultimately, became a much bigger part of the equation, such is the case with Instagram). We had an inkling of this and were just getting started on the network piece of Blogger when I left 10+ years ago. It’s not that Blogger immediately suffered. Its ease-of-use continued to attract users in the tens of millions for many years. (According to Compete, blogspot.com had 63M visitors just this March.) But it was a pretty big missed opportunity for Google. (Don’t worry, they’ve done fine.)
> It will not surprise you that these observations reveal a lot about what we’re trying to do with Medium. We started out by building a great tool for writing. And it’s not even the editor itself that created the main value. It was the fact that you could easily write and share a story without the setup, overhead, or commitment level of starting a blog. It’s clear that there are many more people who occasionally have valuable perspectives to share than there are people who want to be “bloggers.” These people love writing on Medium, even if they see it as just a tool to create a nice page to point people to from Twitter.
> However, that’s not the point. Or, at least, that’s not the end. In the last few months, we’ve shifted more of our attention on the product side from creating tool value to creating network value. What does this mean? Obviously, one form of that value is distribution. And there’s no doubt that something published on Medium has a higher likelihood to find an audience than the same thing published on an untrafficked island on the web.
I think that makes sense. You can use Blogger or Wordpress or whatever to create a blog, but the difficult part is getting traction. Similarly to how Github is not only a place to host your .git repo, but also a "network" for finding/distributing those repos, Medium is not only a place to host your content, but a place to find and distribute that content.
> Some companies end too early because the technology or capital wasn't there to let it get to its full potential.
Blogger is a clear case for that. If it was founded 5 years later, it could have had sharing features and been Tumblr.
Similarly, if Tumblr was founded now, it'd probably have a better comment system, cleaner design and collections. The real question is - is that enough to move the network effect over to Medium. I see Tumblr v. Medium as very similar to MySpace v. Facebook in that regard...
Also, why is Medium so popular? It really doesn't have anything new or different than any blogging platform before it...almost any of the readers of HN could probably create a similar service if we wanted to, so why is Medium so popular? Maybe I'm just really out of touch but I just don't see the value in these websites. Sure they're popular now but for how long? Honestly, how much of their popularity is just because it's the "cool" "new" place to post on, and because everyone else is doing it so I should too?
It's kind of useless, but also, you have to admit, nicer to read there than most other places... And since VCs have TONS of money because bubble etc... It gets traction
I am also convinced that the founders being so connected allows them to raise about 10x what they really deserve
It's not. I only have heard about it b/c of the YC connection, reading articles here posted from Medium.
I heard about it before I even browsed HN or new what YC was. Mostly I read the "War is Boring" articles, specifically by David Axe.
>"Why is medium so popular"
These things might be related.
>"almost any of the HN readers could create a similar service"
Same could be said about Airbnb. There's more to a business than the technology.
Native advertising, that's the only way I see it happening.
Stay a little level headed about it, Medium's becoming one of the big guys, they're getting a lot of page views, there's a good chance they'll find a way to monetize and make that money back.
This is actually one where I'm not surprised at the cash.
I'm pro-author and pro-content creator. I don't believe that Medium is. They're just pro-Medium. Our interests are not aligned. Which is a shame.
Bear in mind that Bezos bought The Washington Post, no slouch in the journalism world, for $250 million not too long ago.
How big is Medium's traffic? Monthly uniques? Ad revenue? Or any revenue?
Where is the there there?
But what is their game plan to monetize?
https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e...
You own the rights to the content you post on Medium. We don’t claim ownership over any of it. However, by posting or transferring content to Medium, you give us permission to use your content solely to do the things we need to do to provide Medium Services, including, without limitation, storing, displaying, reproducing, and distributing your content. This may include promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, distribution, or publication.
This is identical to the ToS for any hosted blogging service such as Blogger or Wordpress - you have to give them a license to your words for the site to do their job.
I think the only 'hangup' that might be in the conditions would be "without limitation" insofar as when does "the things we need to do to provide Medium Services" conflict with the content producer being compensated. As in, if "partner companies" and Medium are engaged in some compensation / revenue undertaking, at what point does an author on the platform have some "say" in the way the content gets used...e.g. a person posts a beautiful poem, Medium can print that poem in an ad in the New York Times to self-promote, and the author seemingly gets nothing, which doesn't seem appropriate.
Not saying that's the intent or anything, but I think healthy suspicion is helpful to all parties for clarity.
I'm looking at that and thinking the way they've phrased it means that 'without limitation' is required to avoid exposing themselves to lawsuits over details, and 'solely' is meant as their promise to the users.
So ... healthy suspicion good, but I feel like they've tried to set it up so that they can only be sued for violating the letter of the agreement, but can (and expect to) be publically excoriated for violating the spirit.
Whether they'll continue to live up to these ideals over time is (aaand we're back to healthy suspicion :) inevitably an open question, but I think the intent is to make it clear that those ideals do exist now in a way that allows us to hold them to it later.
Essentially, authors give up a lot of control to put their work on Medium. It's not that they no longer own their words but that they've given up specific notions of value to publish on Medium. And Medium has specific ideas about the value of the writing published on it reflected in its advertising, etc.
Why is
> This may include promoting your content with partner companies or services for broader broadcast, distribution, or publication.
"doing their job"? What if I do not want them to do that with my content? Have I ceded my control? Can I tell them not to do so?
Medium is trying to be the actual body paragraph of the newspaper[0]. They seek to provide content curation, search and monetization. They provide the analysis of the interesting topics you see on twitter. Twitter is diverse with people like Kim Kardashian to Noam Chomsky. Medium will let these people explain themselves in long form and introduce you to similar thinkers. For Noam Chomsky that might be other linguists or libertarians and for Kim Kardashian it might be a piece of cardboard, or goldfish. I don't know what the strategy is, but I would say 20/80 odds they crack the code. Long odds, but better than most start ups face. They need to:
* Find a way to pay users for content, or create a great incentive for them to continue delivering high quality content to them for free.
* Find a way to organize and display the content.
* Get people to pay for it.
Obviously a tall order. They are trying to be the people who figure out how to monetize without advertising traffic. I have no idea what they told investors, and frankly Ev Williams could say he was remaking Pets.com and he would get funded, but I suspect they have an idea for monetization.
[0] A newspaper was sort of link an internet website. It was made of something called paper and was delivered by actual people to your door. People used to use their hands to scroll through it. Push notifications and updates took ~24 hours to reach newspapers. Not much else is known about these ancient artifacts.
While I remain skeptical of this idea, I really really want it to be true.
Medium: 57M
Techcrunch: 54M
Edit: Thanks for updating the title
It's seemingly not even a topic brought up there in a FAQ or so. Funny, since I think it would open up many new markets.
Somehow a go-to-market strategy involving authors, editors, advertisers, and readers which gives everyone a really great experience. It is a tough nut to crack though.
...change the company name to Large?
Sadly, I'm only half joking.
And let's be honest - it works enough of the time that people keep doing it.
Given that ev is behind it, I would imagine he has the financial resources to fund it himself AND more importantly, he has the connections within the silicon valley Illuminati (i.e. VCs, Tech Journalist, CEOs of various tech companies).