• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, February 3, 2017

In search of a more viable business model, Medium is planning to debut a subscription service. Co-founder Ev Williams -- of Twitter fame – made the announcement at an industry event.

“This quarter is the goal -- to launch the first version,” Williams told attendees of the Upfront Summit, on Thursday.

For the publishing platform, the subscription service can’t come soon enough.

Last month, the company said it was cutting a third of its staff. The layoffs of some 50 employees would mostly impact sales, support, and “other business functions,” Williams said at time.

Medium also announced plans to close its offices in New York and Washington, D.C. -- although some staffers were expected to continue to work remotely from those areas. “The vast majority of the product development and engineering teams will remain,” Williams said.

Explaining the shift, Williams said: “We decided that we risk failing on our larger, original mission if we don’t make some proactive changes while we have the momentum and resources to do so.”

And Medium does appear to have momentum. Year-over-year, readers and published posts were up about 300%, according to internal figures.

Yet, as it has grown as a destination for premium publisher content, Medium’s monetization efforts appear to have lagged behind. According to Williams, however, the issue a just a symptom of a more systemic industry problem.

“It’s clear the broken system is ad-driven media on the Internet,” he contends. “It simply doesn’t serve people. 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.”

Challenging this system, Medium was expected to shift its resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded based on the “value” they create for the reader.

What does it mean in practice? Last month, Williams and his team were unsure. “It is too soon to say exactly what this will look like,” he admitted. “It will require time to get it right, as well as some different skills.”

Now, the question is how long Williams can keep Medium’s investors calm.

Most recently, the company raised $57 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Also participating in the round were Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Obvious Ventures and The Chernin Group.

Medium was founded in 2012 and released to the public in late 2013.