Medium to Launch Consumer Subscription Product Soon

Digital publishing platform Medium is adding a consumer subscription product in the next quarter, reports TechCrunch. Ev Williams, Medium’s CEO, made the announcement last

Digital publishing platform Medium is adding a consumer subscription product in the next quarter, reports TechCrunch. Ev Williams, Medium’s CEO, made the announcement last week at the Upfront Summit. According to Williams’ announcement, the first version of the product will launch this spring and he calls it an “upgrade” to the current reader experience.

This news comes just one month after Williams announced major changes at Medium, including the elimination of 50 jobs, the closing of its New York and Washington, D.C. offices and the elimination of a native advertising model that two dozen or so publishers had been testing. These changes were made despite the fact that 2016 was Medium’s best year to date with readers and published posts up about 300 percent over the prior year. In a post titled 39 Reasons We Won’t Soon Forget 2016, Medium shared why its existence is important.

“In 2016, Medium became more than a platform – it became a place where people turned when it was time to have those hard conversations (okay, and some easy ones),” Medium said. “On a daily basis, your stories provided this community with the opportunity to talk and to learn from each other. So thank you. This may be the end of 2016, but the conversation’s just beginning.”

Regardless, Medium finds change and evolution are necessary. Williams explained the revamp in a January 4 post titled Renewing Medium’s Focus.

“We reached this decision when Medium’s management team came together to review the last year and take a hard look at our business – where we are and where we’re headed. While we could continue on our current path – and there is a business case for doing so – we decided that we risk failing on our larger, original mission if we don’t make some proactive changes while we have the momentum and resources to do so,” Williams wrote.

It looks like a consumer subscription product is the next iteration of the company, but Medium isn’t disclosing any details just yet, so we can only speculate what that might look like. In his announcement, taped and posted on Twitter by Matthew Ball, head of strategy at Amazon Studios, Williams asked readers to subscribe, but that’s all he’s saying. Medium does not address the subscription on its social media accounts or on the site itself.

Insider Take:

It is hard to gauge where Medium will take the company in its next chapter. Will they go to a freemium model where some content is available for free, but more content is available via subscription, or will they use a metered paywall where readers can get X number of free articles per month or a hard paywall where nothing is free.

We’re dying to know more about Medium’s subscription product, but their strategy to share the information and build a buzz is a good one. We’ll have to wait along with everyone else to find out what’s next.

 

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