Leak of Internal Medium Turmoil is Incredibly Eye-Opening
And it also involves Joe Biden
If you haven’t had the amusing chance to see one of the funniest stories to come out of the White House recently, you’re in for a treat.
Joe Biden famously used Medium as one of his campaign blogs in the run-up to the 2020 election. Well, most likely his staff did on his behalf (and hopefully his content approval).
Since the election, he’s only written one article in early March. But I suppose those 89,000 followers on his account aren’t taken for granted.
His staff had arranged a call with Medium’s partnership program to discuss how to leverage the platform now that he’s president.
And they were in for a surprise.
Erotica. Erotica. Erotica.
Everywhere on his feed.
A Biden staff member logged into the Biden account on a video call with Medium staff and was immediately confronted with a saucy tale of Bella Cooper enjoying sexy nights out with strangers while her husband watches.
The poor staff member at Medium tried to rectify the situation by having Biden’s counterpart follow, interact, and read political stories.
They hit refresh on the recommendations and….Bella Cooper again!
With this saucy tidbit:
So, is Joe Biden secretly a massive erotica fan?
Is one or more of his staff taking slightly too long on their lunch breaks?
Or — and hear me out — does Medium have a huge problem with their algorithms?
Is it just views?
If you’re into the community aspect of Medium, I’m sure you’ve read hundreds of gripes about the algorithms lately.
Views were down across the board for big writers a few months ago. This month seems to have yet another change hitting almost everyone. I know month-over-month my views are down about 40% — even with a much higher output.
As for Biden, a Medium staff member seems to think the problem may have been from the 10 “garbage publications” the President was added to as a writer.
I was a bit surprised to hear that since any editor of any publication can add any member on Medium as a writer at any time.
Cough, cough — Noteworthy: The Journal Blog.
I was even more surprised to see the publications we write for will affect our reading recommendations.
Then I found the source article written by The Verge journalist Casey Newton, and sweet holy hell, she opened up a can of worms.
Secrets spilled
The article is a long read but full of new tidbits about the inner workings of Medium. Also note, I got a strong sense of an anti-Medium bias from the journalist, so take that with a grain of salt.
Before you read it, here’s a quick summary of the main points (according to the article):
- Medium’s COO/VP of Engineering left the company this month
- Ev has been personally funding Medium since its last round of funding in 2016
- Ev is now the CEO, acting COO, and Head of Product (a stressful role I used to be in myself, albeit in another tech field)
- Medium now has 700,000 paid subscribers, which would bring in ~$3.5 million per month or ~$42 million per year
- Medium offered generous 5-month contract buyouts to its ~75 editors (these journalist layoffs are what seems to trigger the article’s author IMO)
- Medium’s product roadmap has been a mess due to the constant changes in direction from senior staff and Ev
- Medium had an internal program called Hopscotch where they paid large sums to huge writers/journalists to occasionally post
- They’re now focusing on promoting independent authors instead with the Amplify program
Is this good?
This seems like a mixed bag of events. Firstly, I don’t really see the change of focus away from publications as a bad thing at all.
Unless you’re one of the few paid journalists on the site, of course.
But in the grand scheme of things, I’ll take the backs of a few hundred thousand Medium writers over a couple dozen journalists any day of the week.
And that’s what this change in focus potentially means — more chances for promotion for the everyday independent writer.
I’m sure I wasn’t alone being slightly chaffed at seeing Medium spending millions of dollars exclusively promoting their internal publication articles.
After all, the promise of Medium was it would be a haven for high-quality independent personalities, viewpoints, and stories.
Promoting a paid journalist’s work to get subscribers doesn’t really fit that mantra.
There are hundreds of publishers out there that provide that service and function. I didn’t join Medium to see it become one of them.
Just to clarify, I’m not knocking journalists. I’m knocking the idea that Medium has to be an exclusive publisher for them.
A last note on the positive side of things. $42 million in revenue per year is nothing to sneeze at. 700,000 paid subscribers and a few hundred million views per month aren’t either.
But it still leaves the question to be answered — are they profitable?
Can Medium sustain itself in the long-run?
I suppose these layoffs point to some financial concerns, but perhaps it’s mostly a result of the change in direction as well.
Stop beating a dead horse, I suppose.
Is this bad?
Having a company leader act in multiple roles — especially in such an important position — can be absolutely devastating to a tech company.
Trust me on this one, I speak from a painful experience.
And if it's true that Ev himself is prone to flights of fancy with product direction — that’s even scarier. Again. Trust me. I have nightmares about this stuff.
It's my hope that they hire proper managers to fill in some of these positions.
Planning new product directions is easy. Sticking to them is incredibly difficult. It’s even harder to retain focus on the existing products while doing so.
Cough, cough — algorithms
So while I do have concerns about the financials of the company and especially its product directions, I relax by remembering one thing — Ev Williams is worth something like $3 billion.
Funding a Medium-sized company should be within his realm, especially after taking into account $42 million of revenue.
As long as he keeps his interest in the idea of the platform, that is.
Either way, I’ll still be here while they have me.
Just remember to occasionally download your story archive in case they go tits up someday.
“Tits up, you say?” — Biden /s
Come join my newsletter at Substack as a failsafe in case this gets me banned!
*Italian chef kissing fingers gesture* goodbye to future curation :D
