Medium built its business around publishing ideas to the open web.
Now it is preparing for a future where fewer people find them there.
The company has officially launched TK, a new writing app that combines note-taking, journaling, AI assistance and something Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine describes as “private blogging.” Think Google Docs meets group chats, with Medium sitting at the end if you eventually decide something deserves to be published publicly.
Write First. Publish Maybe.
TK starts as a deliberately stripped-back writing app.
Notes are private by default. They can stay that way, be shared directly with specific people, or be added to Libraries: private spaces where groups can write, comment, react and collaborate around a topic. Early examples include book projects, recipe collections and groups sharing poetry drafts.
There is AI too, but Medium is positioning it more as an assistant around the writing than a replacement for it. Users can search across their notes, ask for feedback, organize ideas or type “TK” inside a document to summon the model for help filling in missing information.
And if something eventually becomes worth publishing, it can be sent directly to Medium.
The interesting part is that publishing is no longer the assumed end point.
Medium Is Designing For A Post-Google Internet
That is where TK becomes much more than another notes app.
Medium still depends heavily on Google for discovery. But as search engines increasingly answer questions themselves and AI assistants consume content without necessarily sending users back to the source, publishers are confronting the possibility of dramatically less referral traffic.
Stubblebine’s response is surprisingly aggressive: if Google stops sending the audience, Medium can stop designing everything for Google.
“We’re just going to take everything underground,” he told The Verge.
TK does not need search traffic because the audience is already inside the Library.
That changes what successful writing looks like. There are no pageview targets or follower counts driving the experience. The value comes from a smaller group actually reading, responding and contributing.
Medium calls it private blogging.
It also sounds a lot like the broader internet moving back toward smaller communities.
For years, publishing online meant making something public and hoping an algorithm brought people to it.
TK reverses that.
Start with the people.
Decide later whether the rest of the internet needs to see it.