“Why write for a pittance for your words,” wrote one of them, Keith Parkins, “only to then find no one is reading what you have taken the time<br />and trouble to write, because it resides within a fenced-off ghetto?”<br />Medium maintains it is doing well by the metrics it cares about.<br />“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information<br />and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Mr. Williams says.<br />“If I learn that every time I drive down this road I’m going to see more and more car crashes,” he says, “I’m going to take a different road.”<br />But a new road may have other problems.<br />“A beautiful space for reading and writing — and little else,” Mr. Williams called Medium at its public debut in 2012.<br />He once told Mr. Williams that he had some new ideas about dating sites but feared<br />that if he tackled them, “I’d be working on the same thing my whole entire life.”<br />Mr. Williams had pondered for a moment and replied, “I’ve been working on the same thing my whole life.”<br />Mr. Hong said: “It’s not a vanity project, it’s his calling.<br />“I think we will fix these things,” Mr. Williams says.<br />“Write whatever you want, and we’ll pay you based on certain terms,” Mr. Williams says now.<br />“Ad-driven systems can only reward attention,” Mr. Williams says.
