Medium Cuts Staff By One-Third, Shuts Down New York and DC Offices (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Medium, the San Francisco-based online publishing platform founded in 2012, has laid off 50 employees, or roughly one-third of its staff. The company will also close offices in New York and Washington, DC. Ev Williams, Medium's CEO, wrote in a lengthy post on Wednesday that the company would be changing its business model despite ending 2016 as "our best year yet." He blamed the entire concept of "ad-driven media on the Internet" as the root of the company's shortcomings. As Williams, who is also a co-founder of Twitter, wrote: "It simply doesn't serve people. In fact, it's not designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other "content" we all consume on a daily basis is paid for -- directly or indirectly -- by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we getwell, what we get. And it's getting worse."

Comments

So medium is now a small?

[SensitiveMale]

So medium is now a small?

Re:So medium is now a small?

[Anonymous Coward]

To this day, I fail to understand the hypocrisy in supporting the little guy against giants like Apple and Microsoft, but rooting for another giant, IBM, to decimate SCO.

Some of us pay attention to who is right and wrong, rather than deciding absolutely everything based on "big mean corporation."

SCO originally filed for misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition. Later, they decided breach of contract might be better. Still later, they decided maybe copyright infringement. Obviously, SCO wasn't so sure exactly what they were complaining about - not nearly as sure as you are.

They claimed that up to 0.0001% of the Linux kernel might have been derived from Unix, but refused to say which parts. As the judge began to strike down their claims unless they identified which code they were talking about, they pointed to some BSD licensed code written by Thompson - code they clearly had no copyright rights to.

When it was pointed out that Novell, not SCO, owned the Unix copyright, SCO tried to buy the copyrights from Novell. Again, Novell clearly wasn't too sure they owned the copyrights, they were trying to buy them from Novell, yet you're sure that they already owned them.

SCO then claimed that the GPL itself is illegal and unconstitutional! Which would of course mean that SCO were themselves unlawfully distributing GPL code! Yeah that annoyed some people.

SCO didn't just lose a case, they were laughed out of court repeatedly. "We're suing you for violating the copyright on Unix, but we're still trying to buy that copyright so can we have a short delay?" What!?!? It was one of the most ridiculous cases ever. That's why people didn't root for SCO, it was because SCO was engaging in ridiculous trolling that made no sense. They argued that the "offending code" was part of the Linux kernel, then argued that it wasn't. They couldn't even make up their mind.

Re:So medium is now a small?

[rmdingler]

Medium's claim that ad revenue is now paid in the blood currency of corporate pandering is a valid and pertinent one.

It is arguably true that this has always been the case, and that we are just now privileged to the information.

Re:So medium is now a small?

[rmdingler]

Not this time coward.

The intuitive leap from medium to small is unquestionably the insightful equivalent of Beamon's long jump in the same vein that Joe Mixon will ever play a down in the NFL.

Re:So medium is now a small?

[fleabay]

Now that's what I call Stallmansplaining!

Re:So medium is now a small?

[quenda]

Because readers paid the newspapers and that money was used by the newspapers to pay journalists

No it was not. The cover price was not even enough for printing costs. What paid for those journalists was classified advertising, called "rivers of gold" by Rupert Murdoch.
Of course the internet killed the classified ads, and online subscriptions can never replace that.

the start of .crash 2.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

God I hope so. So fucking overdue.

Re:the start of .crash 2.0?

[mike2006]

Why? That would put more people out of work, we will have less competition, less access to unique content and more reliance on just a few monopolies that simply copy one anothers content. Let me guess you work for Facebook, Microsoft or Google?

Re:the start of .crash 2.0?

[Mashiki]

Why? That would put more people out of work, we will have less competition, less access to unique content and more reliance on just a few monopolies that simply copy one anothers content. Let me guess you work for Facebook, Microsoft or Google?

Because the entire dotcom industry needs a massive correction again. Uber being valued at half the valuation of Intel? More then Ford, GM, or Chrysler? Not seeing a problem here. It's pets.com and their ilk all over again.

ServePeople

[Luthair]

You know what else doesn't serve people? Firing fifty of them right after Christmas because you lost interest in your hobby.

Re:ServePeople

[Anonymous Coward]

Medium, the San Francisco-based online publishing platform

s/online publishing platform/blog/g

Medium, Macy's.... What's the world coming to? Back in my day, people used to get fired right BEFORE Christmas.

Re:ServePeople

[supercell]

Doing it right before Christmas, would have been worse. All those ad-blockers have an impact.

Re:150 person company - stuff that matters?

[bill_mcgonigle]

150 people to run a blogging platform, no less. I wonder what the org chart looked like. Hopefully most of them were in commissioned ad sales, but fifty seems like it would be big for that kind of business anyway.

Who is medium?

[Ash-Fox]

I've never even heard of them before? Are they important?

Re:Who is medium?

[Luthair]

They're a crappy centralized blog site that had a terrible layout with a huge font rendering it unreadable .

Medium is well named

[Anonymous Coward]

The post's are neither rare nor well done.

bad business model

[ooloorie]

Evan Williams blames a "broken system" of financing media through advertising.

I think a more likely problem with Medium is entering the crowded commodity market of blogging platforms with a bad business model and a staff of 150 for something that should take no more than a handful of people.

Of course, he is worth $1.7 billion, so what does he care.

Re:bad business model

[ooloorie]

The system is broken. It is not serving people well.

Works fine for me. How is it failing for you?

Alternative financial models to eyeballs-for-ads

[shanen]

Based on my comments posted over on Medium (but largely applicable to Slashdot, too, so you can substitute in most places):

Pretty sure I looked at Medium a while ago, and if so, today’s visit reminded me why I wasn’t interested. Same sad story, same verse.

There’s a fundamental mismatch here. Many people really do want to know about the problems of the day and even want to help make the world better. Many people want to learn new things so they can make better choices and be more free.

Such goals are irrelevant to the advertisers who are paying for the “free” websites. They would actually prefer docile robots who will quietly obey the ads and buy the toothpaste or politicians. The kind of news they want to pay for is disaster porn like CNN or profitable propaganda like FAUX “news”.

Apparently Medium is not succeeding with what appears to be click-bait approach. Are they desperate enough to consider REAL alternatives? Here are a couple of the top of my head:

(1) Sell SOLUTIONS to the problems. After each article about a problem there should be some links to proposed projects to help SOLVE the problem. Interested readers could look over the projects and buy a share, perhaps $10 a pop, and if enough wannabe-helpful donors agree, then the project would get funded, and later evaluated and the results reported on. The sponsor should be a charitable umbrella organization that would make sure each project proposal was complete and a percentage of funded projects would go back to the websites that helped publicize the problem (like Medium).

(2) Auction my valuable time in LIMITED amounts in exchange for sponsored news. The intermediary (which might be Medium) would have good reason to protect my privacy and personal information in order to protect their involvement, and the companies that are selling goods and services I actually want would get more reliable access to the customers who actually WANT to buy what they’re selling.

Re:Alternative financial models to eyeballs-for-ad

[wicka_wicka]

I don't think you know what Medium is...this is like suggesting that a paper company is at fault for the failure of a newspaper. Medium is a publishing platform, nothing more. You accuse them of using a "click-bait approach," but there are thousands of sites running on Medium, each with their own approach.