All those ideas have merit but I have a strong feeling that Medium is going in a different direction. They realize that they have captured an enormous amount of users and in order to monetize that ocean of readers and writers they need to appeal to what those users want the most. What do Medium writers want the most? They want exposure. They want their stories and publications to appear in other user’s feeds so they can be read.

So if Medium makes that exposure as difficult as possible for all the ‘smaller’ Medium writers and publications (the 99%) then those ‘smaller’ writers and publications will only become more desperate for exposure and getting in people’s feeds…. so desperate that they will pay to have their stories and publications appear in the feeds of Medium users.

It’s called ‘sponsored posts.’ It is one of the things that is making Mark Zuckerberg wealthier than God. If it’s good enough for Zuck then it’s good enough for Ev?

You can work for days to write a fantastic article or story but that article or story won’t appear in anyone’s feed except for your small handful of followers. Want your story to be seen by new eyeballs? Then pay up.

That is why Medium is currently promoting only the top 1% of writers and publications. That is why they stopped promoting niches such as fiction and other creative writing because those niches are not in the top 1% and they are filled with writers desperate for exposure. That is why our feeds are crammed full of posts by the top 1% (whether we follow them or not). They are amping up the desperation levels so that Medium writers will be willing to pay to have their writing seen and read.

I am becoming more and more convinced that this is the direction Medium is headed in and it fills me with dread. It may not be long before our Medium feeds will look an awful lot like our Facebook feeds which we have come to loathe, clogged full of sponsored posts which we have no interest in whatsoever.

As much as I hate to say it, this would probably be a good business move by Medium and it would make all those investors happy when the billions start rolling in from all the Medium writers and publications who seek exposure but who can’t get it any other way except by paying up.

Why come up with something new and innovative when you can just borrow a proven method from The Zuck?

I pray to God that I am wrong.