Today the company announced layoffs for a third of its staff, leaving 50 people out in the cold for 2017. In a post on the Medium Blog CEO Ev Williams also announced that the VC-backed company would close its New York and Washington D.C. offices.
The reason? Medium wants to try a new business model. And if you just felt a little deja-vu about this message from Williams, know that you’re not alone.
When Medium first launched in 2012 the company promised that it would introduce “a new model” for publishing. 5 years later, while Medium may host more publishers and writers than it did in 2012, it still hasn’t figured out how to make money, unless you count traditional and native ad trials. Today the company is scrapping both revenue schemes and in the process has decided to sack a lot of staff in “sales, support, and other business function” departments of the company.
