Can Medium have 100 million paying members?

When I joined Medium in 2017, it provided monthly updates with limited insight into the statistics. Gradually, however, they disappeared, leaving members guessing how well the platform was doing.

Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine recently offered insight into the platform’s growth. He revealed that on April 9, 2024, the community had reached a milestone of one million paying members.

Can Medium be 100 times larger?

How realistic is it? Tony asks himself that question, as he had once confessed publicly.

Ev Williams launched Medium in August 2012. To simplify our speculations, let us assume that 11 years ago, by April 2013, the platform was out of its infancy. It took about 11 years to reach one million subscribers. How much time might it take to get 100 million?

To find it out, we must look at the pace of growth. Assuming that Medium had no more than a few thousand subscribers 11 years ago and growth was steady, on average, each year brought about 90,000 new subscribers. At that pace, adding 99 million subscribers would take 1,100 years. It would be the year 3124.

In his article, Tony mentioned that Medium gained about 1,000 new subscribers within a day; it would be 365,000 yearly. Keeping this pace of growth, it might take 271 years. It would be the year 2295. Still, none of us will be around to see it.

We can interpret the expansion using the same known data by looking at the growth rate. To do that, we do not look for the number of added subscribers each year but rather the percentage increase from the previous year. Like every other business, Medium had fast periods of growth and some regressive moments. If we assume that 11 years ago, it was 10,000 subscribers, then to reach one million now, it would have needed to increase, on average, by 53% each year. By the way, adding about 1,000 subscribers per day now is close to that 53% average yearly rate.

If Medium can keep that 53% yearly growth, it can reach 100 million subscribers in 2035. Tony might still be the CEO by that year. So, statistically, it is possible in a reasonable time, but is it realistic?

Obstacles that will limit growth

There might not be enough readers worldwide to find 100 million subscribers.

Let us look at the readership in the U.S. Four major newspapers, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today, combined, have about 16 million subscribers, close to 6% of adult Americans. Those are people interested in knowing more about many subjects and actively seeking information from many sources. Most of the current Medium members are likely from that group.

By improving its offer, Medium should be able to attract more from this group. The next group is social media users. Almost everyone is there, but it is hard to pinpoint the reading habits. Do people there read trivia only or seek information outside the main media outlets because they do not trust them? How many of them might Medium attract? In a few years, getting 10% of American adults, about 27 million, seems like an overoptimistic possibility.

Additionally, about two million more could come from native English speakers worldwide and several million more from foreigners who know English well. Still, it is below 50 million and far from 100 million.

With computerized foreign language translation becoming satisfactory, Medium can expand worldwide and open foreign language editions, with selected texts offered with human-assisted translation. How many of the five billion adults worldwide could Medium attract? Getting them will be much harder than it was for short-form platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X. Longer texts are deeply ingrained in the regional culture and issues. Hence, most writers and readers might prefer local forums.

If we optimistically assume that Medium could get about 0.5% of adults outside the U.S., it is still only 25 million. This means that even if everything goes exceptionally well with the current format, reaching about 50 million subscribers within a decade is the most possible.

What do readers want?

Most would have difficulty expressing that clearly.

Humanity has reached a point where, much more than ever before, being well-informed is critical for almost everyone, not only the elites. It is not only about prosperity measured in money. One cannot be happy without a familiarity with sophisticated technologies and the ability to function within complex social structures. Fortunately, technology created access to information that was unimaginable a generation ago.

Most people are trying to figure it out. We can expect that they will rediscover solutions that worked before. A long time ago, my teachers told us that an intelligent person needs to know something about everything and everything about something. Not much has changed in this regard, and it unlikely will.

People build confidence in their capabilities to survive in the modern world by being good at something. By knowing many things, they can explore and enjoy the richness of the world. As a reader, I follow those two directives.

I check articles on the subjects I think I am knowledgeable about to stay on top of those issues. I seek updates of scientific data, as well as new events and interpretations. With my interest in politics, I do not seek to read more articles supporting my point of view. I skim them for something I might not know, but I pay more attention to articles representing opposite views. This way, I avoid locking myself in an echo chamber.

I have noticed that in America today, many readers are discouraged from reading articles representing opinions contradicting their political convictions. Almost all media outlets have a policy of not publishing articles that represent opinions contrary to views they consider superior. I often need to look at many publications, checking what they bring out and omit when trying to figure out what is happening. I do it for my political writing. Most people, busy with work, family, and hobbies, cannot devote as much time as I do to figure out messy politics.

Formally, Medium has a tremendous advantage because one can find texts here that present all kinds of political views. In reality, with the multitude of texts, most of us depend on recommendations from Medium editors, and those editors do what they see in other publications; they promote some views and omit others. By changing that to a more open-minded approach, Medium has a shot at becoming a serious competitor to mainstream media publications. If that happens, the exponential growth is more realistic.

But here we reach another problem: the quality of texts that flow to the top. Potentially, Medium is a treasure box for someone trying to learn something about everything. I purposely do not follow anyone because, in the communique from Medium editors, I want to get the pulse of the forum. In the serendipity of that, I seek to learn about important things outside my area of expertise. I want to be among the first to know about them, not the last.

Broadening an editorial perspective would help, but it will not suffice.  

How do people learn?

Medium’s most promising growth path is to assist people in finding prosperity and happiness in a fast-changing world. People need to learn how to swim in the rapid currents of technology and navigate the swirls of politics.

The classic media approach is to lecture the audience. Medium mimics that, not noticing that people are sick and tired of being told what they should think or do. People learn by saying: Bring the facts and opinions for and against, and I will decide. Medium has the intellectual capital to do that. To capitalize on that, editors would need to identify well-informed writers on a given subject and then stipulate polemics between them. Not to convince any of them to change their minds but to allow the readers to evaluate the arguments of both sides.

No one has been doing that. People strive for information, so it is the way to expand.

Is Medium a community?

It is as much as people using Amazon.

If Medium attracts people seeking information and helps its readers be better informed than others, it will create an influential community. Information is power. Whatever problems we face, like wars, climate change, or migrations, can be better handled by well-informed people.

A community does not happen when people gather in one place, be it physically or virtually. It occurs when people act together for a common good.

In his article, Tony thanked writers for sharing their “experiences, expertise, creativity, and ideas.” He sees us as “a group of people who cared more about doing something good on the Internet.” It sounds minimalistic. “Something good” is so vague that it could be a synonym for nothing. And lastly, why only on the internet? (By the way, it is a mystery to me why some people write “internet” with a capital “I.”)

Tony is right that we share our “experiences, expertise, creativity, and ideas in our writings.” We do it because, as proponents of ideas, we can do much more than others. Writing is not about writing; it is about making the world around us a slightly better place than it was when we arrived.

With that approach, Medium has a shot of growing 100 times bigger before Tony reaches retirement age.