Substack

Substack is an online platform that empowers independent writers and creators to publish newsletters and podcasts, directly monetize their content through subscriptions, and build a community around their work. It provides tools for content creation, distribution, and audience engagement, allowing creators to maintain ownership of their intellectual property and subscriber lists.

Substack is a strong match for the Medium concept. It provides a platform for independent writers to publish content, offering tools for writing, distribution, and monetization through subscriptions. The website explicitly mentions features like owning intellectual property, mailing lists, and subscriber payments, which aligns with the monetization aspect. It also highlights 'great discussions' and 'the app for independent voices,' indicating community engagement and mobile access. While not explicitly stated, a platform for writers to publish long-form content inherently requires a rich text editor, and the display of various newsletters and topics implies a distribution and recommendation engine, as well as tags and topics. The 'Bestsellers' and various categories on the homepage suggest a discovery mechanism. The ability to subscribe and the mention of 'subscriber payments' directly align with membership monetization. The 'Sign in' and 'Create account' options, along with author profiles, support user profiles and following. The 'Get app' button confirms mobile app access. The 'discussions' feature aligns with community feedback tools. The core value proposition of enabling independent voices to publish and monetize content is very similar to Medium.