Medium
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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.
ThinkProgress joins Medium's growing list of publications
When Medium shifted its focus from independent writers to a more full-fledged blogging platform earlier this year, it nabbed an impressive lineup of small, but influential sites. Now Medium can boast its biggest addition yet when the liberal site ThinkProgress moves over to the platform next month.
Periscope gets an editor-in-chief to spot its best live streams
Periscope wants to not only help you share live streams, but find the best of them... and it's willing to try unusual strategies to make that happen. Medium editor Evan Hansen has joined Periscope to become its first editor-in-chief. As he explains to CNN Money, the title isn't as odd as it sounds at first blush. He'll initially be "curating [the] best feeds," making sure that you see the most interesting (and hopefully, relevant) real-time video. Hansen adds that there's "lots of potential room" to grow, so his role may expand as he settles in.
China is blocking access to Medium
The People's Republic of China is notorious for keeping its citizens from accessing free media, be that online or offline. Thousands of sites are blocked by the country's "great firewall," and there's a new entry to that list: Medium. According to GreatFire.org, a site that keeps tabs on China's censorship efforts, Medium.com has been blocked entirely within the country since April 12th.
Medium attracts The Awl and other influential publishers
Medium started as a no-fuss blogging site for passionate writers seeking good design and a larger audience. Over the last three years, however, the platform has slowly expanded and become a home for larger publications too -- both established brands and smaller ones conceived by Medium. Today, the company has announced that a whole slew of small but influential websites are migrating to its platform. These include The Awl, Pacific Standard, Femsplain, The Banana Boat, NewCo Shift and The Bold Italic. Time Inc's Money and Fortune magazines will soon follow.
Medium's collections makes it easier to find things to read
It's taken a few years, but Medium has made a niche for itself as the ideal place for hot takes and navel-gazing editorials on the web. Starting today, you'll be able to find the site's best pieces more easily. A new "collections" feature on Medium's iOS and Android apps will list curated groups of stories underneath major sections, which at this point includes things like news and education, as well as events like the 2016 election. And, in a big change, Medium is also using real-life humans to curate featured stories.
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.
Bill Simmons' 'Grantland' replacement will be on Medium
High-profile writer, podcaster and Grantland founder Bill Simmons has been in the process of rebooting his career following a publicized split from ESPN last spring. He's resurrected his podcast and working with HBO on a new TV series, and now we're getting details about his new home on the web. As announced last week, It's called The Ringer -- and today we've learned that the new site will use Medium as its publishing platform. Medium is calling it the first "premium content website to live on Medium."
Why has Malaysia blocked Medium?
Medium is a popular platform, offering amateurs and professionals alike a simple way to publish their articles. This week, it was blocked in Malaysia. Over a single article posted by Sarawak Report.
Medium overhauls its collaborative publishing platform
Medium's management unveiled a radically redesigned publishing platform on Thursday including a host of new formatting and production features. These new writing tools include the ability to include Twitter-style @-mentions, additional text formatting options (including drop caps to start paragraphs) and a slick "TK reminder" that prompts users before publishing that they've forgotten to finish a thought and left a TK reminder in the text. Additionally, the company is rolling out a mobile publishing app for both iOS and Android, as well as a developers API so that the CMS can be integrated into other sites and apps. Medium has also made it easier to import existing blogs and publications into its custom domain system. Even the company logo received an refresh.
Oculus VP: 'Our number one goal is to make developers successful'
2015 is the year of virtual reality. That's been the consistent messaging coming out of Oculus VR's executive leadership since early this year. And with this week's announcement of a $99 Gear VR headset -- a mobile VR solution co-produced with Samsung -- and the promise of a retail Rift headset coming in early 2016, Oculus finally appears ready to make good on that promise. But although all the pieces of the VR puzzle seem to be coming together -- and the recent press has been (mostly) glowing -- there are still a lot of unknowns. Namely, will the average consumer, once properly introduced, buy into VR? I sat down with Nate Mitchell, Oculus VR's VP of Product, at the company's Connect 2 developer conference in Los Angeles to find out more about Gear VR's potential as a gateway to the Rift, what consumers can expect to come bundled with that first retail headset and whether we'll get to use it with Sony's PlayStation 4.
Astronomers spot a mid-sized black hole
Black holes typically come in one of two sizes: stellar mass and supermassive. Astronomers believe that there are black holes that fit between these two extremes but finding them has proven difficult, with only a half-dozen candidates currently known. Well, as of today, the tally rises to half-dozen plus one. Scientists at the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre have found another mid-sized black hole, weighing in at 5,000 times the mass of our Sun.
Medium ditches passwords for single-use email links
Passwords are, by many accounts, quickly going the way of the dodo. And while many sites now allow users to log in via social media, they're not always a viable option. That's why (as an alternative to logging in via Facebook or Twitter) blog-publishing platform Medium is trying a different tactic: getting rid of passwords entirely. Users will simply click a login button and check their email as Medium sends a single-use, time-limited password link to grant access. It's basically the same process used to reset a forgotten password, save that you won't have to set a new (equally-forgettable) login.
Tumblr's 'big update' promotes essay writing, fewer GIFs
If we're honest, there isn't enough money in monochrome erotica and Benedict Cumberbatch GIFs to sustain a billion-dollar website. That's why Tumblr is doing its very best to become more of a publishing platform that can attract the sort of writing (and attention) you'd normally find on Wordpress and Medium. The site began this process a few weeks ago by enabling embeds of its pages anywhere else on the internet, and now it's ready to give users a much stronger set of tools.
White House releases State of The Union address online ahead of time
As is customary, tonight the President will give his State of the Union address but in a first-time move, the entire speech is available for anyone to read online. It's usually released to reporters early under embargo, but this is the age of the internet and the White House posted it for everyone to read just a few minutes ago. Even if you're watching from home (on network TV, news channels or YouTube), you can know what's coming next. Whatever your political leanings, this seems like a pretty good way to expand access beyond just those with the right connections. [Image credit: Jim Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images]
Medium's new iPhone app helps you read (but not write) long articles
We can't say we know all that many people who routinely digest articles posted through Medium's social publishing platform. However, the readership is bound to go up now that the service has released an iPhone app. The mobile client is more of a story curation tool than anything else. It automatically fetches stories from both your Twitter friends and any collections you follow, optimizing the reading interface beyond what you'd normally get in your web browser. You won't want to plan on writing any diatribes, though, since the iOS app has no editing tools -- you'll have to retreat to a PC when inspiration strikes. If you don't mind that limitation, Medium's client is ready and waiting in the App Store.
Medium brings design and photo improvements to its social publishing platform
Medium is debuting a slew of new look-and-feel tweaks designed to let would-be columnists pretend they're working for a well-designed print publication. The site says that one of its initial goals was to empower writers with "dead simple" tools to present their work without a trip to art school. In addition to spacing and typography improvements, now users can add giant cover images and scalable, dynamic photos for each post. Curious to see how everyone can use these tools? Medium has set up a "Beautiful Stories" collection in the hopes of inspiring you to get a little more visual.
Medium opens its social publishing platform to all Twitter users
Twitter's Ev Williams started Medium to simplify and socialize online article writing, but the service's invitation-only nature has kept many folks on the sidelines. Today, things are opening up: Medium's now accessible to anyone willing to sign into Twitter and verify an email address. Would-be auteurs still have to publish from Chrome, Firefox or Safari on a computer, although plans are afoot for mobile versions. Those eager to share their (mid-sized) masterpieces with friends just need to visit the source link to get started.
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.
