I'm guessing I read several Medium articles a month. Some of them are really well produced - Transit's engineering post on beautifying their maps, Remix's post about public transportation planning and ILP, and Karpathy's post on backprop come to mind. So I hope Medium sticks around because I get a lot of value out of them. Would I pay for this value? I think I actually would, but maybe only for stories I finish and think are good. For example I would pay a lot for the stories above but I would almost rather Medium pay me for posts which turn out to be thinly veiled marketing that I stop reading halfway through (I realize Transit's and Remix's posts could be construed as such but hey, the technical content was deep). I suppose a flat fee is better for the business but I could be more convinced to plunk down the credit card at the beginning if I was charged based on usage, like time spent reading on the site.
Also, let me just take a moment to once again rage against Business Insider for writing a pretty bad article. The whole thing seemed purposefully antagonistic and full of sarcastic language. Maybe it's because BI is the exact type of operation Medium is trying to kill, but I think those MAU numbers actually warrant some optimism! To be fair, Medium probably should have provided some people to counterbalance all those angry publishers...
Also, let me just take a moment to once again rage against Business Insider for writing a pretty bad article. The whole thing seemed purposefully antagonistic and full of sarcastic language. Maybe it's because BI is the exact type of operation Medium is trying to kill, but I think those MAU numbers actually warrant some optimism! To be fair, Medium probably should have provided some people to counterbalance all those angry publishers...