Medium, the subscription-based blogging platform, has launched a note-taking and journaling app, called TK, that's pitched as a private social network.
It comes as personal blogs have become marginalised against competition from social media, vlogging on YouTube, newsletter-type platforms like Substack, and as personal websites find it harder to secure click-through from Google Search as a result of AI-based search.
"We got out of the attention economy," CEO Tony Stubblebine says, in comments cited by The Verge, describing TK as being unconcerned with pageviews or the drive to be noticed.
The emphasis is on private sharing, active collaboration, and pre-publish rough work.
And, well, it is 2026, so naturally the whole thing deeply embeds AI tooling.
Stubblebine frames TK as "the gym" for writing and Medium as "the stage": a space for drafting and feedback before anything goes public, if it ever does drafting, reflection and feedback.
The app replaces a public feed with "Libraries," invite-only spaces where contributors share writing on a shared topic, from recipe collections to book-in-progress drafts, visible only to other members of the group.
Users can share notes via links or email, let collaborators comment and leave emoji reactions, and type "TK" as a shortcut to summon an AI model that searches past notes, organises material or gives feedback on drafts.
The app supports imports from Medium archives and tools like Bear and Obsidian, with Markdown import and export Markdown import/export.
Stubblebine's rationale is defensive as much as creative: with Google sending less traffic to the open web, he says Medium's roadmap is shifting toward "private blogging" that has no dependency on search referrals.
In a report a report by The Verge, Stubblebine described TK as Medium's first launch of real significance since 2017, when then-CEO Ev Williams steered Medium away from advertising and toward subscriptions.
TK is being made available for free on the web, Android and iOS, and Medium plans to accompany it with a desktop app planned.
