Medium CEO Plants Blog Time-Bomb; Announces Job Cut and New Business Model

How many times have you heard about management blogging about a new business model, hinting sure shot job cuts? While it’s rare, Medium co-founder did exactly that on 3 January. He removed 50 employees, to grow company’s future. Instead of an office press release, the online content publishing firm’s founder took to blogging to place the management “time bomb” on its employees.

Medium, an online content publishing firm founded by Twitter co-founder Evan (Ev) Williams will sport a trimmer business model in 2017. In coming days, Media will be lighter by at least one-third on its staff roster. The reduction in its staff will allow the company to realign its business strategy towards monetizing their online content publishing platform to drive more sales revenue. Currently, the company makes money by placing ads on the articles; something that Ev Williams wants to change very soon.

The news to remove 50 jobs from its roster comes despite Medium registering 300% growth in its published content. While other web publishing platforms may be heckled for posting fraudulent Fake News, Medium has devoted its resources to ensure accurate, truthful content so far. Sadly, it’s not generating click revenue. Medium will be shutting down its offices in New York and Washington DC and is likely to go into a siege mode shortly.  Ev Williams chose to announce his decision to restructure Medium via blog. The “hard part” would be eliminating 50 jobs from sales, support and other business functions.

Calling it as a proactive step to fulfill Medium’s original mission, Ev Williams has vociferously raised his lack of faith in the ad-driven revenue model. While the strategy did provide a stage to grow, Williams was disdainful about its lack of resolution in driving revenue through payment of quality content.

Medium was founded in 2012 with an intention to provide writers with a more flexible platform. It provides a full-blow WYSIWYG user interface ( “what you see is what you get”) with the option to add rich texting formats. Largely appreciated for its relevant content, the only time Medium was embroiled in a controversy came in July 2016. The Malaysian government banned Medium in January 2016 and has since remained unavailable for Malaysian internet users.

In all likelihood, Medium will come up with a rewarding content sharing model for writers and publishers based on what impact their content has on readers.