Why Medium is opting out of AI

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we had Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine, the CEO of Medium.com, a publishing platform that he has helmed for more than a year. Medium has gone through a number of versions over the years. Pivots, if you will. But what has been a steady focus in Medium's life in recent years has been its subscription business. Medium offers a paid membership tier that costs $5 per month or $50 per year. And, Tony was willing to share, it's growing once again and is heading toward a pretty key milestone. We also got into: The business of the written word. Medium's stance on AI and what its posture says about how the company views the value of writing. (More on the matter from TechCrunch here.) Why Medium thinks that everyone has something worth saying. There's a little bit of media insider chat during this podcast, which we hope you enjoy. As always, we're back with our weekly roundup on Friday. Talk then! For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website. Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:16.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpacked the numbers and the new ones behind the headlines.
0:19.1	My name is Alex and this is our Wednesday show where we sit down with a guest think about their work and unpack the rest.
0:25.3	Today we are talking with Tony Stubblebind the CEO of web publishing platform medium.com
0:30.8	You may have heard of it I guarantee you've at least been there and on the show today the economics of online publishing how to build a media startup that lasts and also the value exchange between AI companies and online content. Now before Tony was the CEO of
0:44.9	Medium he worked for O'Reilly way back in the day in their digital publishing efforts
0:49.0	he also built a number of publications on the medium.com platform that drove a not in substantial amount of overall traffic to that service.
0:56.3	Tony, welcome to the show.
0:57.8	Hey, thanks for having me.
0:59.1	Yeah, that was way more flowery and polite than I usually do on my intros.
1:03.2	Just so you know.
1:03.8	That's good.
1:04.8	That was perfect.
1:05.4	Yeah, I mean, I've been around.
1:06.8	I've seen some stuff.
1:08.4	Pre-Webto, you know, so that comes into play occasionally here at medium.
1:13.8	Yeah.
1:14.8	Well, being around having seen some stuff actually is pretty much where I wanted to start.
1:19.7	Because I have known about medium, I've I think written a couple of posts on Medium, I have known it through its various incarnations, I have had friends that have worked there, I have friends that work there now. I'm kind of curious, 14 months into your tenure as CEO what is medium today?
1:36.0	Yeah, it's a publishing platform that's supported by a subscription for the best of medium.
1:43.6	And so the subscription goes to pay for the authors
1:46.2	to help incentivize them to write their very best stuff.
1:50.5	And it goes to curators and editors to help find and surface the best things on the internet.
	...

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