Medium is now Smaller, and this is excellent news for Steemit!
Medium, is an online publishing platform and one of the most notable names in the blogosphere.
Today they announced they will be laying off 50 employees, roughly one-third of their staff.
They're also closing offices in New York and Washington, DC.
Medium's CEO Ev Williams, wrote that the company would be changing its business model
Our vision, when we started in 2012, was ambitious: To build a platform that defined a new model for media on the internet. The problem, as we saw it, was that the incentives driving the creation and spread of content were not serving the people consuming it or creating it — or society as a whole. As I wrote at the time, “The current system causes increasing amounts of misinformation…and pressure to put out more content more cheaply — depth, originality, or quality be damned. It’s unsustainable and unsatisfying for producers and consumers alike….We need a new model.”
This is the biggest opportunity that steemit has ever encountered. Medium is an already established platform with huge reach and they are cutting back in part because of ad revenue, but also because advertisers are beginning to pressure for specific spins and narratives to be pushed.
Upon further reflection, it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people. In fact, it’s not designed to.
To my mind this means that Mr Williams is as concerned about integrity as he is about profits.
He has acknowledged that they need a new model, now we need to convince him that
Steem IS the model, and Medium just needs to adopt it!
Honestly it should be trivial for a company like Medium to adopt steem.
Moving Medium onto steemit infrastructure would provide the following benefits for Medium
- Hosting and scaling costs are close to nil, because all the data is hosted on the blockchain.
- The database backend is rock solid and cannot be compromised by hackers and attackers due to the type of cryptography used.
- Generating revenue directly through upvotes which completely negates the need to be beholden to advertisers.
This is literally everything he is asking for from a strategy perspective and we are perfectly poised to help them.
I am calling upon @ned and and @andrarchy and all of the Cryptonomex team to reach out directly to medium to see what we can do to bring them to us.
I'm also calling on the entire community to head over to Ev William's blog and extend him a warm invitation. Some of our writers such as @stellabelle came to us from there. So maybe it would be a good idea for those writers to create articles about how Medium could benefit from steem integration, submit them to Medium and to Steemit so the Medium community can see just how much of a peanut butter meets jelly situation this really is for all of us.
What are you waiting for? Let's do this!
This post is 100% steem powered!
Yes, it seems like an opportunity. I have promoted your post.
Wow, thank you for that!
I love Medium and have had an account for a few years. I have been in this business for years and very few of my social media and blogging peers get what we are doing. I prefer passive engagement, just like how I found Medium. If we flood the internet with Steemit links we will be noticed.
This is potentially a great news in deed and cross my fingers, arms, legs once when not twice! Thanks for the info. All for one and one for all!!! Namaste :)
How do you see such an integration working?
I could see it as a opt-in basis, so authors on Medium would have the option to basically link their account with a steem account and cross-post everything to both sites. I'm not sure if this makes sense as a business model on Medium's end, it could end up with authors just jumping ship entirely if they get better compensation on the Steem side.
To my mind, authors could keep accounts in both sites, but keep in mind that steemit was created as a demonstration platform for the steem blockchain. The plan always was to work with existing social media networks and get them to move their backend infrastructure to the steem blockchain and this would drive demand for steem as a currency.
The resulting rise in steem price would more than compensate from the dilution effects of multiple sites adopting steem as their infrastructure and impacting the reward pool.
The fact is medium is much more curated than steemit and has WAY more eyeballs.
There are already writers with accounts on both places.
To my mind, Medium would probably be the one with the steem account and that account would get all upvotes. They could split the rewards with authors based on number of pageviews over 30 days.
@dan also had some proposals for a setup where upvotes were split with a host site, that would actually be ideal if it were in place right now since no one would need rely on a third company to pay them properly.
OK, got it. Thank you for taking the time to explain that, I have a much better grasp on the situation now.
Your idea about Medium having its own account and splitting rewards to authors from there sounds completely plausible to me. I'll show it some support over at Medium.
A brilliant approach! It is a matter of time some big Social Media catch up !
It's an interesting article, and I uprooted. However, the garbage, antiquated, and p**%-poor interface of Steemit will be one of the hurdles for sure - amongst others mentioned herein.
I think that's a bit harsh kuching. The steemit ui isn't all bad and if you look at esteem and a few of the others, you can see that it's fairly easy to redo the UI to suit particular tastes.
Steemit has programmers doing UI. Medium has designers doing theirs.
Hi @willimabanks - come on, let's be honest here. Steemit is a clunky, techie-driven poor excuse for a UI. Creative types and 'designers' would absolutely HATE it (as do I). It reminds me of something from 1998.
There is NO way creatives would put up with it, I'm quite sure.
Have you used Medium, Wordpress, or other modern platforms, like Bravenet? (even LI is better, and FB allows all kinds of things to be added, uploaded, etc. with a simple click).
While I think it'd be great to capture some of this Medium audience, it's likely not in the cards.
Steemit's UI never was intended for people from Medium.
But we do have alternative UI's they just aren't here on steemit.com
That's kind of the point though. Integrating a steem backend into medium would be good for them and good for us, a total win/win.
Love the idea. Good luck! You will certainly need it, given the current state of play of this platform.
BTW not just the UI - there is a much deeper conversation on the 'fairness' and the propensity of only 'whales', half-naked (or fully) women, and sports to dominate this nascent platform. UI is HUGE; this is even bigger IMHO.
William, check out what Fred Wilson wrote about this issue. https://steemit.com/steem/@pairmike/breaking-news-steem-just-got-a-big-endorsement-from-fred-wilson
Great catch! Upvoted and resteemed!
I can not understand all the news because my English is not good.
One thing to understand is that the Steemit system is great, so follow it.
Anyway, I believe that the Steemit system is great
Thank you for uploading a good article.
@sochul There is a famous website called medium.com and they are having problems earning money. My post is saying that if they used steem they would not have these problems.
Thank you for giving your answer using your precious time.
It means only use the Steemit reward system in the medium.
I have a clear understanding and I upvoted, followed and resteemed :D
Yes that's correct!
Honestly, I've not even heard of this.
373rd most popular website in the world..
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/medium.com
Steemit.com is the 16,000th
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com
me too it's the 1st time i hear about it
Heh. A little bit of schadenfreude is okay. No? :-D
Honeyscribe did not come from Medium. She was brought over from Huffington Post blogging.
But yes, this would be a good opportunity to reach out to more writers...and their followings, which is just as important.
Thanks @ats-david I've corrected it now.