Upon further reflection, it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people. In fact, it’s not designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other “content” we all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we get…well, what we get. And it’s getting worse.
Steemit and Steem are a year ahead of their realization.
So, we are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re creating for people. And toward building a transformational product for curious humans who want to get smarter about the world every day.
It is too soon to say exactly what this will look like.
Their post sounds like they don't know how to move forward yet.
Medium integrating with Steem would be miraculous. If the miracle were to happen, it would be amazing fusion of their UI and UX with Steem's backend.
In more realistic planning, Steem can capitalize on Medium's walking into the unknown. A better UI, especially in the departments of ease and flexibility of formatting and post display, can go a long way into bringing Medium's user base over to Steemit. Or Steem with a different front-end, if steemit.com development isn't flexible enough to make such a shift.
This is an excellent point @pfunk our UI teem tries hard, but at the end of the day the steemit ui is being created by programmers and not Designers. I remember back when steemit first open sourced the code there were some attempts by a guy from brazil to produce a "Medium style ui" on top of steemit. I don't know whatever happened with that effort, but it looked slick.
If medium just used steem as a backend, they could dramatically cut their own costs and I'm fairly certain there is enough talent to make that look and work slick.
With the recent surge in cryptocurrency market, convincing medium may not be so difficult