Medium has a new CEO. Here's my prediction
Happy Friday,
In case you haven’t heard, Ev Williams stepped down as CEO of Medium. As of last Tuesday, the new CEO is Tony Stubblebine, aka Coach Tony.
Stubblebine was formerly CEO of Coach.me and founder of three of Medium’s biggest publications — Better Humans, Better Marketing & Better Programming. He said Medium will be acquiring those publications.
I just listened to a one hour interview with him on YouTube.
He made some statements people are already talking about. There’s going to be a ton of meta posts, of course. Here’s the “big” highlights…
Writing and editing on mobile is coming back. Not fast, because they can’t just turn the old editor back on, but it’s in the pipeline.
They are testing a “tips” feature. It was in the works before the CEO change and will roll out soon. It will be a limited test, not site wide.
They’re talking about rewarding writers for external views. No info or date, but he thinks writers who bring readers via SEO should be rewarded.
Not sure what I think of “tips” but the other two are great.
3 things Medium’s new CEO said that are really important...
When you put all 3 together, it paints a picture of where he may be going.
1. He talked at length about the quality of content…
One of the points he drove home repeatedly is that readers are his focus. There are many thousands of writers, but there are far more monthly readers. I researched the numbers and Medium currently has around 100 million monthly readers.
He said readers pay the fees that pay the writer pool. So, if readers do not see value in paying the $5 membership, there’s less funds from which to pay writers. So the reader experience has to come first.
2. An anecdote about what should not be distributed…
He told an anecdote that stood out for me. A writer submitted a piece about a psychological experiment and extrapolated some life lessons from it. He said it was really well written. Great storytelling. Great writing skills. Compelling reading. It had all that. Problem was, the experiment had been debunked years ago.
He said it would not serve the reader to give that piece any exposure at all. And for that reason, he thinks it’s important to seek to feature people who are knowledgeable on their topic matter, regardless of the size of their following.
3. A brief and telling comment about curation…
At the end of the interview, he answered questions from listeners. One writer asked if they can fix curation, because even when her stories get curated, it doesn’t make much difference. His response is that he believes too much is getting curated. When “too much” gets distribution, it ceases to matter. But if less content with higher quality gets distribution, then it will make a difference to those pieces.
Here’s my prediction…
People write on Medium because there *is* some level of built in audience. Writing on Medium isn’t like starting a brand new Wordpress and trying to drive traffic. There’s more opportunity to get eyes on our writing. It’s still hard, yes. But as hard as it is, it’s still easier than a solo wordpress.
I’m an editor of 2 publications and my biggest grief is quality. Or rather, lack thereof. People don’t read submission guides. They don’t read Medium’s guidelines. They don’t fact-check, they don’t cite and sometimes don’t even credit images.
All that stuff is going to cost them.
I predict that when the dust settles, the handful of people who can write whatever it is Medium is looking for and calls “quality” are going to do very, very well. And everyone else is going to be sorely disappointed. More so than ever before.
What do you think of the changes?
More reading…
P.S. If you’re reading in email, click the title to get to the online version where you can leave a comment. Click the heart to send me a thumbs up, too. :)
xo,
Linda
I love the proposed changes. Quality is the paramount issue from my perspective. There are too many people on the platform who write about topics they are ignorant about, don’t fact check well, or do a little bit of both. There is too much clickbait and whining about curation and views. If Medium can figure out how to promote quality content by narrowing curation, I think it’s a win for good writers and readership generally.
Thanks for your summary. Love your newsletter (and Book Cafe)!
Thanks for the info, Linda. I’ll reserve opinion on the changes until I see how they affect my payout. I like the sound of them, but generally Medium has claimed to prefer quality writing while it fills my newsfeed with crap. Lately my experience on Medium has been demoralizing: my meager payout has become more pitiful over the last few months, while I keep seeing articles worthy of the National Enquirer promoted on my feed. (I do try to influence what Medium shows me, but resistance to their algorithm seems to be futile.)
One thing that troubles me is how many publications seem to accept all stories submitted to them. There’s a sense that many writers don’t “craft” their writing. They might (hopefully) proofread, but their stories are still in an early draft stage, possibly first draft, enabling them to have several published pieces a week. Ive rarely submitted a story that hasn’t been edited several times. For me, working hard on my writing means I’m spending days (or longer) on one story rather than trying to push out multiple stories in a day. To make 62 cents on a story that I put not just my heart and soul but also my writing skills into makes me want to cancel my membership.