The Founder Of Medium Just Dropped Bombshell News

And what it means for the future of Medium

Yesterday, Ev Williams dropped a blog post called “Medium Editorial Team Update.”

You know what it should’ve been called?

“I Was Wrong All Along.”

In the post, Ev admits that the “Editorial” content they created in-house at Medium wasn’t driving as many subscriptions as they hoped, and that basically it was a waste of money and time.

Read his post to get a better understanding of what’s going on. Here’s my thoughts..

I remember when the first Medium-owned publication, OneZero, was created. I felt pretty neutral about its sudden birth onto this platform.

I also remember Medium starting to fill our homepages with NOTHING BUT Medium-Owned Pubs. Do you remember when we used to get nothing but Forge, Human Parts, and OneZero on our homepages?

Medium thought that’s what we wanted to see as a subscriber-base. They were mostly wrong.

While these publications were creating insightful, research-backed articles, there was a growing sense among the Medium community of “We don’t care about this. Why are we being shown this shit on our homepages?”

In short, many of us didn’t see the value.

We just wanted to keep following our favorite writers. Which brings me to today.

In his Ev Williams words, who is the Founder of Medium, here’s what he said hasn’t worked on Medium:

“What’s worked less well is where we’ve followed the traditional editorial playbook — specifically, commissioning stories from professional writers into publications with broad mandates. When I say “worked less well,” I don’t mean the work itself, but the equation of cost, audience, and return on investment.”

When he says “publications” here, he means the Medium-owned pubs like OneZero, Forge, and Human Parts.

My pub, the Post-Grad Survival Guide is NOT a Medium-owned publication. It is owned by me, not Medium. I just wanted to draw that distinction that most publications you see here are NOT Medium-owned.

For a long while, Medium commissioned stories to be written for their publications, and paid out a reported $500+ per article.

So, based on what Ev said, nobody gave a fuck about what these publications were/are publishing.

We don’t care.

MORE EGGROLLS, PLEASE, AND LESS CAVIAR.

On one hand, you have to respect what Medium tried to do. They attempted to lift up the quality of stories we saw on the platform to the level of, say, The Huffington Post.

And they succeeded. They published some awesome stuff from pretty awesome writers. The problem was, nobody cared.

They spent $500+ per article to have pieces written by professionals, and nobody fucking read them. They took up space on a homepage for months (years?) and nobody cared.

You have to wonder what the opportunity cost looks like here. What if they featured stories that readers actually wanted from the authors that they followed? How many more views would’ve been generated? When I see crap on my homepage, I exit Medium instead of click into 3–4 stories. That’s revenue being lost in Medium’s case.

So what’s the problem here?

Let me highlight one REALLY crucial part from Ev’s latest blog post:

“In 2018, we saw promising signs. Our subscriber base was growing quickly, and it was supporting increasing amounts of platform and professional content.”

Let’s go into my time machine for a second. No, really. Come on in here. I got popcorn.

HEY. GET IN HERE.

In 2018, there were no Medium-owned publications. Ev says their subscriber base was growing quickly back then.

So we know that the subscriber base was growing quickly back then. Remind me, Ev, what kind of stories were driving this growth?

This is 2017–2018, back when Medium-owned publications didn’t exist.

Oh, that’s right, the INDIE WRITERS were driving this growth. Huh. That’s fucking weird. It’s almost like that’s what people wanted to see instead of whatever the fuck Medium decided to do.

The first chance Medium got, they brought on Editorial staff to create professional content. Basically Ev stormed the stage, snatched the microphone from our hands, and said “I’MMA LET YOU FINISH, BUT..”

*Surprised Taylor Swift Face*

Then he continued..

“Hey, thanks for growing our platform, but also, fuck you.”

Back then, Medium betrayed the very audience that allowed them to dabble in this bullshit. We paid them to go bring on writers who didn’t care about Medium to create content that Medium readers didn’t care about.

Hold on a second, I just gotta pull this knife out of my back real quick.

It’s a weird kind of vindication to hear from the man himself, Ev Williams, that this didn’t work.

Well, no shit. We could’ve told you that Ev!

Professional Vs. Indie

At its core, this all gets back to the argument of what audiences want more.

Do they want professional content, or do they want indie content?

You’d think that insightful, research-backed stories would win. You’d think the quality of professionally written articles would be recognized by everybody.

You’d think that spending money to create better content would attract more readers.

In the face of all this, everybody on Medium said a collective “Na, bro, just give me the personal development.”

On some level this is sad. My high school US government teacher once said:

“What’s popular is not always right, and what’s right is not always popular.”

Better content should win. The zombie masses who read about cold showers and clap 50 times for all that bullshit are so hard to figure out.

On some level, Ev has to be discouraged by this development. He worked so hard to get to a spot with Medium where they could actually create the content he thought people NEEDED.

He wanted to make the world a better place, and finally had the business model to support that.

He harvested caviar for his audience at great personal and financial expense.

Then he brought it to our tables, set the plates and silverware, and laid that sweet caviar down in front of us.

Then everybody rolled their fucking eyes.

“No, we’re good. Just give us the eggrolls,” we said.

Like, what the fuck?

Ev’s gotta be fuming. And no offense to eggrolls here. They’re my favorite, too.

It Doesn’t Need To Be About Indie vs. Professional

And who says indie writers produce crappy content? In my view, Ev has a lot to be proud of.

Medium is one gigantic social experiment. The theory?

Anybody can be a writer. Anyone has something meaningful to say. We all have powerful stories and emotional tales of triumph, despair, and sadness. What’s Medium’s mission statement, to me?

Your words matter.

That’s Medium’s mission statement, and it’s a fucking powerful one. They were right. Our words matter. We all have a story, even though many of us don’t believe it. If you’re human, you’ve been through something. Now write about it on Medium, because we value your words.

Ev accomplished his greatest feat years ago. He did it when Medium was born. The original idea was powerful enough. All he needed to do was continue to nurture it.

Other Really Important Lines From Ev’s Post

Here are a few other important lines from Ev’s latest blog post, which was fascinating for so many reasons.

“What’s happened, though, is the Medium subscriber base has continued to grow, while our publication’s audiences haven’t. There are many potential reasons for this, which we could debate.”

Yeah, we could debate it, Ev.

“I think a significant factor is that the role of publications — in the world, not just on Medium — has decreased in the modern era.”

I disagree with Ev. There’s so many amazing Medium publications here that have grown to extraordinary levels of followers and monthly views. MEDIUM’S publications didn’t grow, but many Medium publications DID.

“Trust is more important than ever and well-established editorial brands still have meaning. But today, credibility and affinity are primarily built by people — individual voices — rather than brands.”

I disagree here, too. But I wouldn’t challenge Ev on this.

What Does This Mean For Medium?

Finally, what does this mean for Medium?

In all honesty, I love this news. Ev said that they’re going to take the focus off publications and point it more towards the individuals on this platform.

Good. Stop paying for content that nobody cares about. Break up the Editorial Team. Medium was doing just fine without them.

Basically we’re reverting back to 2017–2018 Medium, and I’m fucking here for it. Only time will tell how our stories will perform in the algorithm anymore.

Overall, this is good news for me.

Get my free 5-day Medium writing course right here. It’ll teach you how to write five posts per week and become a top writer on Medium. :)