đŸȘ” Medium bucks

Vimeo, Medium, Threads, and more.

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Backlog
August 26, 2024

Does using messaging apps make you happier? A new study by YouGov seems to say so, at least when compared to using social media apps.

86% of teens feel ‘totally happy’ communicating with their friends & family on messaging apps like Snapchat, WhatsApp, and iMessage (vs. 75% using social media platforms for the same purpose).

The same study highlights a wide generational gap: only 63% of adults feel ‘totally happy’ chatting with friends via messaging apps.

Thankfully, we have no friends.

In this issue: Vimeo, Medium, Threads, and more.

Let’s get it.

Vimeo product strategy: AI ✹

Vimeo AI productivity feature / vimeo.com

Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer uttered the magic words: artificial intelligence.

In an interview with Axios, Moyer shared Vimeo’s product strategy will (continue to) focus on AI. We say ‘continue to’ because, clearly, Moyer’s team has already had a busy summer with the release of:

  • An AI tool to translate audio & captions in minutes.

  • An AI assistant accessible across the platform.

  • An AI tool to generate video scripts from a simple prompt.

  • An AI tool to identify & nuke ‘ums’ and ‘uhhhs’ from your video.

Can Vimeo remain competitive? Hard to say, as the text-to-video market is heating up like a GPU farm. Here’s a reminder:

  • Canva released a text-to-video functionality in March 2023.

  • OpenAI released Sora in February 2024.

  • Lightrick released its AI movie maker in February 2024.

Vimeo will have to find new and exciting ways to support its target audience (creative professionals, filmmakers, and businesses) if they hope to beat this steep competition.

Making the Medium bucks

Medium / medium.com

Medium, on the other hand, have chosen to avoid generative AI (so far); and it seems to finally be paying off.

Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine made the exciting announcement:

August is our first profitable month in the history of the company. We got here because more members are supporting us than ever before.

Tony Stubblebine

Founded in 2012, getting to profitability has therefore taken a cool 12 years. One helluva journey.

What did it? Generating revenue became a point of focus in Medium’s product strategy back in 2017. That year, they launched two initiatives:

  1. Memberships (March 2017). Medium launched a $5/mo membership plan which would give subscribers access to exclusive content and an ad-free reading experience.

  2. Partner program (August 2017). Medium allowed writers to earn money based on engagement to their stories.

Medium also massively cut costs, according to Tony, managing to half their AWS bill.

Medium cut AWS costs in half / medium.com

Yep, that’ll help.

From the woodshed

  • Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been arrested in France. The French authorities claim Telegram’s lack of content moderation makes Durov an accomplice to drug trafficking, money laundering, and more. The internet is, unsurprisingly, aflame.

  • Tidal launched features aimed at helping artists track and manage their royalties. Did you know Tidal made (approximately) $50m in Q3 2023? Neither did we.

  • Threads continue to ship features. This time, users spotted ads in their feed for the first time. Meta downplayed the monetisation play, saying there is “no immediate timeline for monetization”.

  • Midjourney now offer a website-based image generation tool, excellent news for all the Boomers allergic to Discord. New users get 25 generations for free. Use them wisely.

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Written by: Product nerds. What did you expect?

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