{"id":679762,"date":"2026-11-09T19:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T19:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/679762\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T19:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T19:22:11","slug":"medium-is-launching-a-new-note-taking-app-called-tk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/679762\/","title":{"rendered":"Medium is launching a new note-taking app called TK"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time ever, Medium is becoming more than just a blogging platform. The company is launching a new app, called TK<\/a>, that combines note taking and journaling with something resembling a private social network. The app is meant to get you writing more, and help you share that writing with friends and fans. And it\u2019s part of a much bigger idea about blogging, and a much broader thesis about the state of the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve actually had a launch of anything important since 2017,\u201d Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine tells me over Zoom, a few days ahead of the company\u2019s biggest launch<\/a> in apparently almost a decade. That was when Medium\u2019s then-CEO, Ev Williams, decided to quit chasing ad dollars<\/a> and become a subscription business. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet,\u201d Williams wrote at the time<\/a>. \u201cIt simply doesn\u2019t serve people. In fact, it\u2019s not designed to.\u201d Medium began charging for access to most content. \u201cWe got out of the attention economy,\u201d Stubblebine says now.<\/p>\n

The trend Williams saw back then, though, has only accelerated and metastasized. AI companies are hoovering up any content they can get their hands on, legality be damned; search engines and chatbots are sending less and less traffic back to the web. Medium, like most websites on the internet, relies on Google for a huge portion of its traffic \u2014 in the time of Google Zero<\/a>, that\u2019s an existential risk. \u201cWhen Google started taking away all the traffic,\u201d Stubblebine says, \u201cwhat I told them is that this hurts us, but it also hurts you, because I\u2019ll just tell you what my product roadmap is going to do: I\u2019m going to switch to private blogging\u2026 We\u2019re just going to take everything underground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TK<\/a><\/p>\n

TK is for writing \u2014 but it\u2019s also for taking quick notes and finding them later. Image: David Pierce \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

All of which brings us back to TK, an app and network that has no use or need for Google referrals. The idea behind TK is fairly straightforward: It\u2019s a barebones note-taking app, with emphasis on daily journal-style notes and longer-form writing. The app itself is nice enough, like an ultra-minimalist take on Evernote, but it\u2019s the stuff around the writing that has Stubblebine most excited.<\/p>\n

For one thing, you can point an AI model at your writing, and use it to help organize or make sense of all the notes you\u2019ve been taking, by searching through your notes or asking for feedback on your writing. \u201cTK\u201d is both the name of the app and a shortcut in it: type the letters (which writers use frequently as a placeholder \u2014 they\u2019re easy to find later, since the letters T and K hardly ever appear next to each other otherwise) and you can summon the model to fill in a bit of information for you. Stubblebine refers to \u201cUnix pipes\u201d a few times in our conversation, and his idea is to use the large language models to do some of the grunt work of both creating and managing notes.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Libraries \u2014 private blogs \u2014 are the core social concept of TK. Screenshot: David Pierce \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve written something \u2013 and Stubblebine emphasizes that it doesn\u2019t have to be a blog post \u2014 you can then share it however you like. You can share it via links or email the way you\u2019d share a Google Doc, and collaborators can write, comment, and leave emoji reactions. You can also add your writing to what TK calls Libraries. Stubblebine calls the Libraries concept \u201cprivate blogging,\u201d which is a good metaphor. The early Libraries I\u2019ve seen in the app are mostly centered around a topic, and people can contribute their writing on that topic. There\u2019s no public face to any of it; it\u2019s just a blog for and by its authors. Sometimes a few of them, sometimes a few hundred. There are groups sharing their ongoing book projects, swapping recipes, and posting poetry drafts, all for the eyes of only the other people in the group. It\u2019s blogging meets group chats.<\/p>\n

This concept of private blogging is a big part of the future of Medium. \u201cMedium is, at some level, performative,\u201d Stubblebine says. \u201cYou have to want to share yourself with the world.\u201d But in a post-Google world, he says, that\u2019s essentially impossible. TK doesn\u2019t measure pageviews or reward authors for getting traffic. \u201cThis is a community that\u2019s going to give you feedback and encouragement,\u201d Stubblebine says. \u201cIt\u2019s not about the drive to be noticed.\u201d Features like this, he says, are coming to the broader Medium platform soon.<\/p>\n

TK is now available, for free, via apps for the web, Android, and iOS. (Stubblebine says a native desktop app is also coming soon.) If TK works, though, it could be a crucial new way for Medium to make money. Obviously, Stubblebine says, there are ways to make money from private and paywalled content. That\u2019s the newsletter business. But also, he wonders, what if there\u2019s a way to package up all the best stuff from the Recipe Box library and charge people, or AI agents, for access? \u201cThe generic web is getting dumber and dumber,\u201d Stubblebine says. If AI is the future, \u201cit needs to be based on this layer of human intelligence.\u201d And all that intelligence might be better off outside the confines of the Google algorithm.<\/p>\n

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