The interesting thing is Medium isn’t making money, I was surprised to hear that. So I can only assume Vocal isn’t either.

But Twitter didn’t make money for years, and was still very influential so had a “cultural value”. Amazon made a loss for so long it was jokingly called Amazon.org. I doubt Facebook was profitable until well after Peter Thiel’s backing (speculation on my part there).

I think the point here is both Medium and Vocal can and do attract investor money and probably will until they turn into cash cows. I’m assuming that’s how it goes with most internet venures!