Publisher or Platform: Medium’s Identity Crisis
Throughout the company’s varying lifecycle since its launch in 2012, Evan Williams’ Medium has subtly yet impactfully transformed its revenue model to earn a profit while delivering added value to the stakeholders.
Apparent from feedback as well as compromises made on the platform, this balance has proven daunting, making the mere description of what Medium is quite confusing. Is Medium a publisher, a platform or both?
Answering becomes a challenge when taking a brief look into the company’s history:
- Founded in 2012 aiming to offer a more ‘centralized’ platform for reading and publishing, which would attract stakeholders from all angles including authors, influencers and content owners. At this stage, Medium was described as the best-in-class content management system.
- Medium in 2015- the company was now described as a publisher/platform combination. It was essentially a content network that overlaid the human network combining the ability to feature publishers on the platform alongside readers and other content creators.
- By 2017, the online publisher/platform now complemented their second phase with an intelligent algorithm that suggests stories. The added value came in the form of providing audiences with content while allowing them and the content creators to forge connections, paving the way to becoming an even more collaborative atmosphere.
Throughout these phases, Williams made the world of digital content more seamless through a highly ergonomic and user-friendly interface.
Content creators didn’t have to go through the trouble of setting up their own blog or website, outperforming competition such as Wordpress or other CMS solutions, that didn’t emphasize content experience or user engagement in their business models.
Medium’s space was also very simple and attractive. Reading and writing digitally became fun and entertaining.
The publisher/platform also reflected the value: WYSIWYG, or what you see is what you get. This was apparent in the transparency writers had, being able to see how content would be presented during the editing process. What writers saw in editing mode, is exactly what readers would see in the published story.
Finally, writers could embed additional content to their stories including images, videos and links with the absence of any coding or highly technical work.
Lack of Clarity
Despite superior features, usability and ambition, Medium’s identity remains unclear.
This lack of clarity is pegged to the publisher/platform’s business model and monetization.
Medium started with a sponsored content model where the company struck sponsorship deals with companies including BMW. In these sponsored publications, Medium were unique through the metric used to monetize the content; TTR, or total time reading. This differentiated them from other traditional marketing metrics that focus on impressions/views, overlooking the number of people that actually read and engaged with the content.
The company had initially claimed to be a platform where readers could find engaging content and content creators could publish their work. They then moved on to becoming a publisher and later transitioned back to being a platform.
Medium first generated revenue via advertising and sponsored content followed by their publishing program, both of which later shut down.
An Unachievable Goal
It is apparent from struggling to choose from two approaches, that Medium were veering towards an unachievable goal: becoming the best of both worlds.
Being a publisher or a platform are two different models that need different approaches in how the product itself is built as well as the organizational structure.
As a publisher, Medium would have to focus on discovering, or aggregating content to gain readers. To be an ideal platform, they would have to enhance their infrastructure and tools that would allow for the publishers, or content creators to seamlessly create engaging content that increases readership for themselves and Medium as a whole.
They created value as a publisher by giving their audience far broader and diverse content that would be very tedious to collect otherwise, as the user would have to subscribe to a number of niche publications. Instead, Medium offered an array of categories and stories from different content creators for a fraction of the cost: $5/month.
While this seems to be their calling, Medium falls short on allowing publishers to own their relationship with their readers; a crucial factor for publications.
As a platform, Medium delivered value by solving tech issues. Publishers no longer had to worry about managing their platform or building their own website, SEO and other technical practices.
On this side, they fell short on allowing seamless connection between publishers and their domains. Medium has also failed in providing tools for content creators to easily connect with their readers such as an email or direct message tool.
Road to Mediocrity
To be the ideal publisher, Medium must control the relationship with their readers. And to become the ideal platform, publishers must be able to seamlessly connect with their readers.
Due to the contrasting nature of these two business models, trying to be the best in both will only forge further confusion for the organization and its stakeholders, paving the way to mediocrity or a failed product.
