Source: Twitter

Ev Williams just announced that Medium's new monetization strategy will be a subscription model. Will it work or fail?

As many of you know, In January, Ev Williams decided to layoff 50 Medium employees and shutter 2 of its offices. Despite raising $134 million in venture capital funding, Medium's monetization strategy has never been clear at all. After Medium experimented with ad models for a while, Ev Williams decided that the advertising model was broken and recently changed course in a dramatic fashion. Up until this week, it wasn't clear what monetization strategy Medium would try next. Ev has decided to try the subscription model as Business Insider, TechCrunch and others reported recently.

Business Insider's story, INSIDE MEDIUM'S MELTDOWN: How an idealistic Silicon Valley founder raised $134 million to change journalism, then crashed into reality was particularly brutal in its portrayal of Ev Williams' decision-making process. This article is currently being viewed hundreds of times per minute, and was just released 7 hours ago. In it we learn that publishers, advertisers as well as employees were completely in the dark about the drastic new changes:

As with the lack of communication with employees, some advertisers weren't told in advance about the change of plans either, and they were upset.

"I did not think he would just pull the plug on publishing and start f---ing people."

And the move infuriated some of Medium's publishers, who were not warned and had bet their livelihoods on Medium and the business model Williams was ditching. This model involved Medium cutting them a check every month — a guaranteed minimum payment — and helping them sell ads. That was over. -Business Insider

As a regular contributor and a fan of Medium, I have to say that I am a bit skeptical of subscription models for a blogging platform. I personally dislike subscriptions and I'm not sure if it will actually result in the kind of revenue that the shareholders are expecting. It's anyone's guess, though.

What is particularly worrisome is that Ev Williams is a billionaire who has, in the past, not been too concerned about revenue, monetization or economics. He sold his unprofitable blogging platform, Blogger, to Google in 2003 which was rumored to be a $20 million deal. Equally worrisome is the amount of recent bad blood between Medium and ex-staff, publishers and advertisers who are all a bit bitter about the newest divergent plans.

The next few years will be really interesting in terms of seeing if the subscription model will work for Medium or if decentralized social blogging platforms will begin to become more mainstream and give Medium some serious competition.

I guess Ev Williams never read @andrarchy's or my posts about how to merge Medium with the economics of Steem.

Click here to read @andrarchy's post about Medium's monetization options.

Click here to read my post about Medium and Steem giving birth to a new platform.

Here's a video that describes this new subscription model for those of you too lazy to read: