Why Medium is NOT The Next Twitter

It's the next Myspace

Tom from Myspace

Yesterday in a haze of curiosity and dread I found myself wandering into the monstrous edifice of glass and steel that is Bloomberg headquarters in New York City. Having survived that, I decided to tour the famous NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center.

Each of these places is an impressive monument to the power and perversion of the media machine. But beneath the glitz and glamour there was a feeling of decadence — a changing of the guard.

Bloomberg was a Sillicon Valley tech titan in the sheep's clothing of a news outlet, while NBC felt like it was living off the dead husk of prime time TV.

“Jesus creeping shit!” I thought. "It's like I wandered into a time capsule!"

While I've been off the journalistic frontlines for a while, I can’t help but see the same exchange of power in the new online media landscape as well.

Medium.com, the once king of blogging, is not the Twitter killer it thinks it is. It's not the YouTube of writing either. It's Myspace at best.

Why Medium is The Next Myspace

The most glaring red flag? Medium Day 2023.

Who cared?

I’m not one to bite the hand that feeds, but I was bored to tears by Medium's first digital "jamboree." Medium Day 2023 was supposed to connect writers, teach us more about the platform, and celebrate the Medium community. Instead, it felt like a lecture about things you already know told in the style of a 20-hour safety presentation at the airport.

I did enjoy the discussion on "How to Start a Successful Publication on Medium."

But that was it.

Every topic felt like a video created circa 2007 with the cheapest video quality and nothing of substance to say. If you're hunting for examples of good digital conferences, take a look at Real Vision Finance, Valuetainment, and X (pour one out for Twitter) — platforms that, no matter where your political loyalties lie, understand the ABCs of putting on a damn good show.

Buster Benson of Medium seems like a nice enough guy, but there has to be a better way to explain the mechanics behind people’s livelihoods.

Now ask yourself: What is Medium’s brand?

Who's the Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibbi, Jessica Wildfire (RIP her Medium presence), Seymour Hersh, Meghan Murphy, Whitney Webb, or even Jim Cramer of the platform?

What content can I get there that I can’t get anywhere else?

Obama’s ghostwriter…? Burning man? There really no reason to be exclusive to Medium because it no longer offers something you won't get elsewhere. The two words I use to describe it these days are "Bland" and "Tech."

What does Medium do to set itself apart? Nothing.

The Rise of New Media

Every time I mention Substack, they pay me $100.

Substack.

Substack. Substack… go check them out. ($$$)

At least Substack ought to be showering me with cash considering the number of times I've plugged them for free. Unlike Medium I have a good reason to talk about Substack: the danger element.

When Seymour Hersh wrote about the United States sabotaging Russia's Nordstream Pipeline, he didn’t publish it on Medium. It was on Substack. The same goes for Matt Taibbi’s expansion on the Twitter files.

And it's not that everything interesting has to be news media related, but there is an originality component to commercially viable art, whether it's writing, comedy, music or nudist interpretive dancing.

I think of the media like NFL teams: Spotify has Joe Rogan/Alex Cooper, Rumble has Andrew Tate/Glenn Greenwald, Substack Heather Cox Richardson/Taibbi, Patreon True Anon, Twitter Tucker Carlson.

Medium does have Tim Denning.

But how do they repay him? By not letting him speak at Medium Day 2023. Yikes.

Here's a new rule: if a platform doesn't have a person or few people you couldn't find on any other platform, it's shouldn’t be your primary focus.

What's Next for Medium

"Twitter is dying and you can quote me on that.”- CEO of Medium Tony Stubblebine

I disagree.

Even if Twitter is a total shitshow right now — albeit one that can succeed as X— it still offers tools and perspectives you can't find anywhere else.

It's okay for people to disagree and diversity of thought is good.

It's why Mark Zuckerberg's Threads didn't work.

It's why Digg.com doesn't work anymore.

It's why the old media institutions are failing.

There's nothing new or exciting about them. It's why even 90% of content on the internet doesn't work. There's no danger, no originality, nothing that sets it apart from the rest of the noise.

It's why I'm fine with being castrated on Medium for an article like this one because I'm appalled that no one has written about how stale, uninteresting, and worrying the state of Medium is after that lackluster Medium Day.

I'm not ready to give up on it entirely on Medium

That's why I will publish nearly every other day there until the end of the year — by then, I'll know if the platform is worth saving.

Don't worry, my best stuff will still be on Substack.

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Thanks for reading, more career ending articles on the way.