I Interviewed Medium’s New CEO. Here’s What He Shared About His Plans for the Future.

I had the honor to host the first-ever interview with Medium's new CEO Tony Stubblebine.

As a writer who's been on Medium since 2018, I've known Tony's work for years. When I started to grow one of Medium's largest communities for writers, he joined the conversation, answered questions, tried to understand what writers are up to, and we even hosted an interview in early 2021 to help writers grow their audience and impact.

I was thrilled to hear that he's stepping in as the new CEO because I experienced first-hand how much he genuinely cared about the community for years.

You can find the replay of the full interview on Youtube:

Here are the core ideas Tony shared:

Medium's core mission is to spread great ideas.

Tony has worked with Medium founder Ev Williams for over a decade. Through this background, he had a great sense of what Medium is and which purpose it fulfills.

Yet, I know this isn't the case for most writers. A lot of people believe Medium's core purpose is constantly changing, yet, according to Tony, the core idea has always been the same: Medium is here to help people spread valuable information and great ideas. It's about constructive conversations and about helping people make their lives better.

Readers are willing to pay for great writing, but it's our job as writers to ensure they get the most value.

Medium has been a pioneer in running a subscription model where users need to pay to access content.

This has always fascinated me: With so much (great) free content being available on the internet, it's incredible how Medium has become a place with so much value that readers are willing to pay to read.

Tony's core message throughout the interview was that the main challenge he'll try to solve is increasing the quality of content on the platform.

Most users aren't aware of the fact that the money to pay out writers comes from readers. So the core goal of everyone interested in improving Medium needs to revolve around figuring out how to make sure we create a platform and stories that are worth paying for.

This is fantastic news for everyone who's genuinely passionate about writing and sharing her message. But it's terrible news for everyone who's here to quickly build an audience and make money through the Partner Program.

Readers are at the center of Medium, and for the platform to work, this needs to be the core interest of everyone who's involved.

So the question each individual writer can ask herself is, how can I add value to the readers of the platform?

This is a question Tony and I also explored last year. One of his ideas is to write your articles with a book in mind.

Value comes from expertise.

Another idea Tony shared is that writers should be more careful about what exactly they write about.

If you want readers to spend time on your stories, you should be able to share ideas from a unique perspective and know what you're talking about.

Too many writers create stories that are a mere summary of other articles.

To make Medium more valuable for readers, we need more stories written by subject experts instead of writers who join for quick wins.

I've always taught my community that focusing on just a few core topics is the best way to grow an audience on Medium, so I was excited to hear that's also how Tony envisions the future of the platform.

You wouldn't pay for a book, course, or seminar by someone with no credentials to talk about the subject, right?

Yet many new Medium writers expect to get rewarded without being willing to explore a topic in depth.

Curation *should* be restricted.

According to Tony, the biggest problem with curation is that too many articles are getting curated. That's why many writers report they don't reach more readers despite curation.

If you're currently struggling to get curated, you might feel like getting curated is hard, but unfortunately, it isn't. Thousands of stories are being curated each week, which is why curation often doesn't make a significant difference.

According to Tony, the bar for curation should be higher so a curated story can actually reach more readers.

This might sound disheartening to writers who have already been struggling with curation, but Tony has shared a great example of why it's a crucial step to make the platform better:

Medium is an open space for everyone.

Everyone can join and share stories quickly and easily.

Yet, what's not available for everyone is distribution.

And that's just fair because certain writers are more experienced in the topics they write about. This means they naturally write stories of a higher quality.

If you're genuinely interested in psychology, you can write an article and explore that interest.

But when it comes to reaching readers, you need to be aware of the fact that you might be competing with psychologists who have professional experience and credentials.

So the question is, why would a reader pick your story over an expert's?

Sometimes, there might be a solid answer to this question. E.g., because you've gone through specific challenges and can speak from first-hand experience. Other times, it might be hard to find an answer at all.

At the end of the session, Tony also said that you don't necessarily need to think of yourself as an "expert" to write about a topic. But you need to have some sort of experience so you can share valuable information.

This is a huge challenge and won't be solved with a few minor tweaks, but I'm excited to see which changes we'll experience over the next few months and years.

Writers should be rewarded for external traffic.

One exciting idea Tony talked about is how writers could be further incentivized or rewarded for driving external traffic.

By writing stories that reach an external audience, a writer is helping to grow the pie for everyone. Those writers should be most highly rewarded because they support the common goal of the entire platform: More readers and paying subscribers.

However, this isn't on the product roadmap yet. It's just a problem/idea the team is aware of.

Medium might introduce tipping so readers can reward individual writers.

Medium has been working on a tipping feature that might be released in beta soon.

Editing in the mobile app *might* come back.

Medium recently removed the editing feature from apps, which many writers were confused and frustrated about.

Tony mentioned that the team is aware of this problem and that they *might* bring it back. However, it might take some time as the "old" editing feature can't just be turned back on.

Thanks for reading/watching.

I hope some of these insights will help you navigate your journey on Medium with more confidence and clarity in the future.

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