Medium is definitely an American on the net publishing System designed by Evan Williams and introduced in August 2012. It truly is owned by A Medium Corporation.[2] The platform is an illustration of social journalism, aquiring a hybrid selection of beginner and Specialist men and women and publications, or distinctive blogs or publishers on Medium,[3] and is consistently considered to be a web site host.

Williams, Beforehand co-founder of Blogger and Twitter,[4] originally developed Medium as a way to publish writings and documents longer than Twitter's 140-character (now 280-character) most.

In March 2021, Medium declared a adjust in its publishing method and company model, lessening its individual publications and rising help of independent writers.[five]

Heritage
2012–2016
Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and former CEO, produced Medium to encourage buyers to build posts for a longer time compared to then 140-character Restrict of Twitter. When it introduced in 2012, Williams stated, "There's been fewer development toward raising the standard of what is created."[six]

By April 2013, Williams described there were 30 whole-time team engaged on the System,[seven] which includes a vacancy for a "Storyteller" job,[eight] and that it absolutely was getting "98 p.c" of his time.[seven] By August, Williams noted that the web-site was even now little, Whilst he was however optimistic about this, saying "We try to make it as easy as is possible for people who have thoughtful points to mention".[nine]

Medium has actually been focusing on optimizing some time website visitors invest examining the location (1.five million hrs in March 2015), as opposed to maximizing the scale of its audience.[10][eleven] In 2015, Williams criticized the common Internet targeted visitors metric of exclusive guests as "a really unstable and meaningless number for what we are attempting to do".[eleven] Based on the company, as of May possibly 2017, Medium.com had sixty million special every month viewers.[12]

Medium preserved an editorial department staffed by Experienced editors and writers, had quite a few Other folks signed on as contractors and served as a publisher for various publications. Make a difference operated from Medium Headquarters in San Francisco and was nominated for your 2015 Nationwide Journal Award.[13] In May perhaps 2015, Medium created deep cuts to its editorial budget forcing layoffs at dozens of publications hosted about the platform.[fourteen] Several publications still left the platform.

In 2017, Medium launched paywalled content available only to subscribers.[15] In 2017, Medium started paying authors determined by how much end users expressed their appreciation for it through a like button which Every single user could activate a number of times.[sixteen] The formula for payment was soon adapted to also involve the period of time audience invested looking at, Along with using the like button.[17]