Medium could be going through what #pinterest did a couple of years back. It failed to find good strategies to monetise its site. It had 50 billion pins used by users by 2017–8 but strategies to add #advertising pins were too late and too expensive. Example, at one stage, shoe companies were reported to have to pay $1mil to advertise on Pinterest. Now, how many companies can afford to do this? I spent like 6–7 years on Pinterest and haven’t touched it for a year now. Pinterest has lost the plot to me.

For Medium, the problem is where to find extra revenue? Obviously the USD5.00 per month per member is not quite enough to pay for more features, pay staff salaries and Head Office expenses, that sort of thing. That could be why it started searching for new partners who could have some deal to pay them $X for bringing them new members/views/leads.

How will it end? If what happened to Pinterest is not scary enough, remember what happened to #myspace before Facebook became the giant it is now.