Medium can be an American online publishing System created by Evan Williams and released in August 2012. It really is owned by A Medium Company.[2] The System is surely an example of social journalism, getting a hybrid selection of amateur and Skilled people today and publications, or unique weblogs or publishers on Medium,[3] which is routinely regarded as a blog site host.

Williams, previously co-founding father of Blogger and Twitter,[four] at first produced Medium as a means to publish writings and paperwork longer than Twitter's one hundred forty-character (now 280-character) most.

In March 2021, Medium introduced a improve in its publishing method and business enterprise model, cutting down its personal publications and raising assistance of impartial writers.[5]

Background
2012–2016
Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and previous CEO, created Medium to stimulate users to generate posts longer as opposed to then a hundred and forty-character limit of Twitter. When it introduced in 2012, Williams mentioned, "There is been a lot less progress toward increasing the standard of what is actually produced."[6]

By April 2013, Williams noted there have been thirty full-time employees focusing on the platform,[7] like a vacancy for your "Storyteller" job,[eight] Which it was taking "ninety eight %" of his time.[seven] By August, Williams described the web page was still little, Whilst he was nonetheless optimistic about this, expressing "We try to really make it as straightforward as you can for Individuals who have considerate factors to state".[nine]

Medium has become concentrating on optimizing enough time website visitors commit looking through the internet site (one.five million several hours in March 2015), versus maximizing the scale of its viewers.[ten][eleven] In 2015, Williams criticized the common World-wide-web website traffic metric of one of a kind readers as "a highly risky and meaningless number for what we are trying to do".[11] In accordance with the company, as of May 2017, Medium.com had sixty million one of a kind every month audience.[twelve]

Medium preserved an editorial Division staffed by Specialist editors and writers, had numerous Other folks signed on as contractors and served being a publisher for many publications. Subject operated from Medium Headquarters in San Francisco and was nominated for your 2015 Nationwide Journal Award.[13] In May possibly 2015, Medium manufactured deep cuts to its editorial funds forcing layoffs at dozens of publications hosted about the platform.[14] Numerous publications left the System.

In 2017, Medium released paywalled articles available only to subscribers.[15] In 2017, Medium commenced paying out authors depending on just how much customers expressed their appreciation for it through a like button which Each individual person could activate a number of instances.[16] The formula for payment was shortly adapted to also include the length of time viewers put in studying, Along with using the like button.[seventeen]