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11445 words Tony Stubblebine keynote 2023, what are the most important ones for Medium writers?
The Highest Paid Writers of Medium. AI detection. Friend Tier // update — TONY has commented on my story!
Summary of the most important changes for writers on Medium
“I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter”
The above quote captures the mood of yesterday’s keynote (1.21 hours), my love for Tony is not waning, quite the opposite.
“So I know a lot of you watch medium pretty closely and knew that we were adrift. Yes, I’m telling you, you were right.” Tony Stubblebine
Here are the key figures from Tony Stubblebine’s keynote speech:
- 12.9 million — The number of authors who have shared a story on Medium.
- 17 billion — The number of times a transfer of wisdom has happened from author to reader on Medium.
- 45% — The percentage of stories read on Medium that were published or edited by a publication.
- 25,000 — The number of attendees at Medium Day 2023.
- 350 — The number of authors speaking at 230 sessions at Medium Day 2023.
- 13 months — How long Tony has been the CEO of Medium. (14?)
- Over 1 year — How long Medium had been losing subscribers before its recent turnaround.
- June 2022 — The worst month in Medium’s history with maximum subscriber losses.
- 3% — How much less likely readers are to click on Boosted stories.
- 2x — How much more likely readers are to become members after reading Boosted stories.
- 35,000 — New Medium members in June 2023.
- 47,000 — New Medium members in July 2023.
- 101,000 — Expected new Medium members in August 2023. “It’s not the readers, it’s the writers.”
Tony acknowledges the limitations of existing AI detection tools.
“None of the tools to detect AI work at all. None of them are nearly good enough in our trust and safety team actually test like retest all the tools every two weeks. That’s the problem. And that’s why we can’t say, Oh, AI is banned. Well, we just don’t really know at that level at like per article level what what it is.”
Here are the most important changes for writers on Medium based on Tony Stubblebine’s keynote:
- Greater focus on quality over quantity of writing. More incentives for thoughtfulness and substance rather than volume.
- Content should be authentic and come from a place of passion. Less incentive to produce repetitive or formulaic content just for financial gain.
- Readers are looking for writing that feels like time well spent. Pieces should aim to provide value, understanding, and meaning.
- Recommendations and curation becoming more human-driven through initiatives like The Boost. Expertise valued over just popularity/virality.
- Partner Program expanding to more countries soon like India, Brazil, and Thailand. More opportunities to get paid.
- Publications becoming a bigger priority and area of focus for Medium. More support for publications and editors.
- Old content still valued for building loyalty and authority, but quality of new content more incentivized in monetization.
- Hate speech and misinformation being diligently monitored. Commitment to diverse perspectives but not toxicity.
Overall, the direction is towards more thoughtful, truth-seeking writing that builds understanding between people. Financial incentives are shifting to reflect that mission.
Here is a list of the most frequently used words in Tony Stubblebine’s keynote speech:
The most frequent words center around Medium itself, the act of writing, stories and content, authors and readers, quality, topics and expertise, algorithms and incentives, and the overall user experience.
Writers / Readers frustrations
Tony spends significant time validating users’ past frustrations with Medium’s algorithms and incentives not meeting their needs.
He is candid about Medium’s mistakes and periods of poor performance, indicating transparency rather than defensiveness.
Tony focuses heavily on aligning Medium’s incentives with providing value to readers and writers. This suggests a genuine commitment to serving users.
Points causing skepticism:
As CEO, Tony is responsible for business growth and revenue. This means he cannot completely ignore financial incentives.
He does not provide concrete data/metrics to back up some of his claims around improvements.
Tony risks overstating the uniqueness of Medium’s approach to content when aspects are common elsewhere.
He does not directly acknowledge valid critiques around issues like moderation biases.
As a new CEO, Tony Stubblebine may be taking credit for positive changes he did not solely drive.
The increase of paid subscriptions in August 2023 is, in my humble opinion, due to two reasons:
1. The requirement of a paid subscription to join a Partner Program. 2. 100 million chatGPT users want to monetise their content generation somewhere.
Overall assessment: While Tony likely balances business interests as CEO, his speech indicates a sincere commitment to serving users and realizing Medium’s mission. However, users would benefit from seeing concrete evidence and acknowledgement of areas for improvement to feel fully convinced of his intentions. A degree of healthy skepticism is warranted, but there are positive signs as well.
Friend Tier
is Medium’s biggest secret, and certainly as surprising as:
the 4th version of its Partner Programe.
The Highest Paid Writers of Medium
“We probably never considered it but the highest paid writers of medium are all business consultants, and it’s not how much do we pay them. It’s how much to the clients who love their writing on medium how much they pay.” Tony Stubblebine
