evwilliams
Latest
Medium expands its reading subscription to any author or publisher
Last March, publishing platform Medium introduced its Partner Program, a Netflix-style subscription model that gave members exclusive pieces of writing, access to features before anyone else, an offline reading list and an ad-free experience. The program left beta in August, and it expanded to more media partners like The New York Times, Bloomberg and Rolling Stone last month. Now, though, CEO Ev Williams has announced that Medium will allow any publisher or author to join the partner program, essentially democratizing its paywall and merit-based rewards system.
Medium snaps up Talkshow and its public chat app
Talkshow's namesake chat-in-public app never really caught on, but that doesn't mean the team's story has ended just yet. Co-founder Michael Sippey has revealed that Medium has bought Talkshow Industries. It's a tiny outfit, but it's important enough that Sippey will become Medium's Head of Product and help the service "evolve" its paid writing model. Sippey isn't providing any specific clues as to what he'll do next. However, he has confirmed that both Talkshow and Episode (an unfinished podcast discovery app) are shutting down.
Medium is making audio versions of its best blog posts
Minimalist blogging platform Medium is expanding into audio. Readers who have a $5 per month subscription can now listen to stories published by fellow members, as well as those hand-picked by Medium staff. As TechCrunch notes, more than 50 stories have an audio version at launch, and more will be added over time. It's a small number, however each one has been recorded by a professional voice artist, rather than a robotic text-to-speech service. You'll find them at the top of articles, both on the web and in Medium's mobile apps, with some basic playback controls.
Medium hopes subscription plans can save it
Popular blogging platform Medium is launching a consumer subscription service, just one month after firing a third of its staff. The first version will launch later this quarter as "an upgrade to your Medium experience." Although Medium CEO Ev Williams didn't offer any additional details yesterday at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles, he simply encouraged people to, "Please subscribe."
Medium can't make money from blogging, so it's cutting 50 jobs
When Ev Williams left Twitter to build Medium, it was with the intention of building "the best writing tool on the web." It's up to you to decide whether he succeeded, but it looks as if his efforts weren't enough to make the company a success. In a blog post, the CEO revealed that he's firing 50 people and radically redefining its business. Long story short, it looks as if Medium needed to change, or risk running out of money.
Bloomberg: Twitter is locked in an internal battle over sale
Something is rotten in the state of Twitter, and it looks as if some of the blame should be laid at the feet of Jack Dorsey. At least, that's the sentiment of a lengthy report from Bloomberg that discusses the company's current malaise. According to sources, there's a three-person battle amongst the firm's leadership over what Twitter should be, and what its future holds. Dorsey reportedly wants to keep running Twitter as an independent company, while co-founder and board member Ev Williams wants to pursue a sale.
Medium is working on paying its contributors
Getting paid to write is hard, a situation that's not helped by so many places asking you to work for free. Medium CEO Ev Williams has let slip that he's working on a way for his service to enable writers and publishers to get paid. In an interview with BBC News, Williams revealed that his team was "just starting to work on that now, actually." He added that a monetization feature is being built "right now" and will be available before the end of the financial quarter.
Twitter founders create Branch and Medium to keep the conversations, collections flowing (updated)
If you've ever been so embroiled in a chat or sharing splurge that you've been told to "take it off of Twitter," you now can -- sort of. Twitter co-creators Biz Stone and Ev Williams have launched Branch and Medium, two companion services that (naturally) use a Twitter sign-in but narrow the focus to just a few subjects. As the name suggests, Branch lets especially vocal Twitter users invite others into conversations that don't clutter everyone's feeds or cut replies off at the 140-character limit. Medium? Think of it as Pinterest turned publishing platform: members can publish either a static collection of favorite articles and media, for reading and rating, or leave it open for more collaborative efforts. There's no rush to open the floodgates to the invitation-only portals, though. Stone and Williams see the quietness of their new services as an antidote to the madness of regular social streams, and we can't help but sympathize. Update: The services don't quite work in the way The Guardian originally suggested. Branch lets you invite others into conversations through email, not just Twitter. Medium is really a self-publishing system, not a Pinterest-style sharing service. Also, the Twitter founders were just the most prominent investors in Branch and Medium; they weren't responsible for creating the companies.
