5 Changes I’d Love To See On Medium
Last week I learned that a woman I used to read at another writing site died. I didn’t know. We lost touch when the site died. So here’s the thing…
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Last week a writer I know left Medium. Her income dropped over 90% and she can’t justify the time anymore. She needs to replace the income to make ends meet. Medium was helping pay her bills. Now it’s not.
I get it. My earnings tanked too.
But at the same time?
I wrote here before there was a partner program.
Lots of people did.
Medium launched in 2012. For the first five years, everyone wrote free. The partner program didn’t launch until 2017. It was amazing! Omg, to get paid for writing. Does it get better than that?
Right now, a lot of people are struggling. Not everyone, but a lot.
Here’s the thing. Things change. They have to. The other option is stagnation and that’s not better.
Plato once said change is the only constant. Get this — he was quoting Heraclitus, a philosopher he looked up to. It makes me laugh that even old philosophers like Plato added quotes to their writings.
Every change will help some people and hurt others. That’s just how it works. I don’t know anywhere that’s not true. Which is a long way of saying I’m not here to complain about the changes.
But I do have some suggestions, so I’m throwing them on the idea pile. Maybe you’ll love some of them and spread the word.
1. I’m *so* up for promoting timeless content, but I’m not sure the homepage is the right place…
Couple of weeks ago, a reader left a comment on one of my posts. She said something like “Wtf, this post is 4 years old, why is it in my feed?”
It made me laugh.
She ended the comment by saying it was a great read, but the date confused her and she’s not sure why she’s seeing old posts.
If you’re grumbling about old content on the homepage, let me explain what you might not know. Medium is trying to breathe new life into timeless (evergreen) content. Because here’s the thing — the value of a story is not the date on it. You know?
I watched the video Tony & Sinem made about Medium in 2023. Here’s a little snippet in case you haven’t seen it…
49:23: “I think I mentioned in my Boosting the Boost post that we want to organize the back catalog. … I’d say, like, top level we’ve got 75 million blog posts on Medium and if we were to organize the best of those we’d have a knowledge base on par with Wikipedia, covering different topics. (source: youtube)
I’m so up for that. Maybe it’s selfish, but I GET the value of timeless content because I write a lot of timeless content.
- I wrote a post in 2020 called “10 Ways to Avoid Bad Writing According To a New York Literary Agent” — over 7400 CLAPS on that piece. The stuff in there still has value and will have value 5 years from now.
- I also wrote Sorry, Lewis Carroll was no pedophile. The official Lewis Carroll Foundation emailed to say thank you. Omg!! You know how good that felt to get that email? That piece is also timeless.
- My The Pied Piper Was Real post got almost 10K CLAPS! It’s the true story behind what you thought was a children’s story. Also timeless.
How could I not agree that timeless content has value? I write about writing skills and history. Those are as timeless as it gets. I’d love those pieces to live forever. I would. Truly. There’s a ton of research in those pieces. Most people have no idea the hours (literally, hours!!) I put into those.
But that said?
When I came to Medium today, the most current story on the homepage was 5 days ago. Plus, there were posts from Feb 2021, March 2018, Feb 2016 and a lot from last Aug., Sept. and Dec.
Here’s the thing...
Even as a writer of timeless content, I’m not sure it belongs on the homepage. Because even though Medium has a content base on par with Wikipedia, people don’t use Medium the way they use Wikipedia. They don’t come here to research and make sure their facts are straight. They come here to read and I think user expectation is an important factor.
I’d be the first to say please, please find a way to keep my evergreen content alive. But even as the writer, I’m not sure it belongs on the homepage.
I wish I had a brilliant suggestion for where it does belong but maybe one you does. That’s one of the magical things about large groups of creative thinkers like we have here. You never know who gets the lightbulb idea.
2. Do you remember when the following feed had a toggle for “people” and “publications”…?
A long time ago, our following feed had 2 tabs. People and publications.
It let readers toggle between new content by the writers and publications we follow. That toggle made me read more. I could read the writers I follow first, then go check out publications to see if anything catches my eye.
Because here’s a little secret. Just because I follow a publication doesn’t mean everything they publish is good or interesting to me.
It’s the writers we follow that keep us reading here.
Right now, when I flip to the following feed, it’s filled with posts from publications I follow. I unfollowed some publications that publish high volume in an attempt to see writers I follow, but it didn’t help.
I know Medium wants to focus more on publications to try improve quality here. I read that in Tony’s boosting the boost post.
That’s a good thing. Much needed, I might add. I do think editors can help oversee quality and there is a quality problem here. There’s a quality problem everywhere. That’s just the nature of people and the internet.
If we could see the people we follow more easily, read time would go up. And we’d be more likely to poke around in publication feeds.
Maybe that’s just me. But I think a lot of readers want to see the writers they like to read and get frustrated when we can’t find them.
3. Remember when Medium told us where new followers came from? Omg, I miss that!
This isn’t a new feature — it goes way back to the early days of Medium. It’s a feature I loved and have missed for a really long time.
On a regular basis, Medium sends emails that say “Your Audience is Growing!” and shows how many new followers we have. They still send those today. (If you don’t get them, check your settings)
In the early days of Medium, there was one more part to that email. At the bottom, it showed the top 5 sources of new followers. The list included both individual stories and publications.
For example, it might say:
- Your #1 source of new followers was this story.
- Your #2 source was this publication.
- Your #3 source of new followers was this story.
- etc.
I loved that. Love, love, loved that.
It inspired me to write better. I’d see the stories that are bringing me followers and want to write more of those. And you KNOW they were always my best work. The confirmation was inspiring.
Plus? It made me want to support the publications that led to followers. Didn’t matter if I had to wait 3 days to get published. Didn’t matter if they asked for 5 changes. Omg, they brought me followers. Submitted!
It was really a encouraging feature and I miss it.
4. I really miss the “mute this story” feature and I prefer it over “show less like this” — here’s why…
One thing Tony talked about in his Boosting the Boost post is using the tools Medium gives us to manage what we see in our feeds. And that’s a valid point. Instead of complaining about the feed, use the tools.
Specifically, he referred to the show less like this feature.
Except?
If I can be honest, I don’t like that feature. Here’s why…
If I click “show less like this” I have to trust an algorithm to know what “is” more like the story I didn’t like. I don’t know the criteria for how that’s determined. I don’t know if it’s going to show me less by that author, less on that topic, less from the publication, or how that’s determined.
Often, it’s not that I want less on the topic. It’s usually the slant of the story. Or the negative vibe. You know?
Sure, I could just ignore it. And I do. But we used to have a feature called “mute this story” — I liked that feature a lot. I used it a lot, too. Because for every story I muted, another story showed up to take it’s place and a lot of times it showed me stuff I did want to read.
So instead of ignoring half the homepage, I could make stories disappear and see others in their place.
Maybe I’m the minority and that’s why it’s gone. lol. No idea. But I used that feature far more than I will ever use the “show less” feature.
5. I wish the the green bars were clickable…
When I log into my stats, I see the green bars of joy and gloom. Joy when they’re high, gloom when they’re low. Every writer can relate.
But every once in a while, THIS happens… WTF???
The frustrating part is that I have NO IDEA what grabbed readers that day. Obviously, something did. But I’ll never know what. :(
If I knew, I could do something with that information.
Here’s an example. Let’s pretend I click that giant green bar and saw that my Charles Dickens story was going wild. You know what I’d do, right? I’d write a follow up piece. Like, instantly!!
I’d post it in the same publication so it appears in the bottom of page publication feed under the story that’s going wild. And voila — win, win. The reader gets more of what they’re hungry for and I get more views. Plus, when I get more views, Medium gets more views.
Maybe that’s not even possible. I don’t know. But sure would be nice.
It’s great to see how many views we have. But those green bars are just a pretty visitor counter. They’d be a lot more helpful if they told us something that could help us strive to create more of what readers are reading.
Which is good for the reader too, right?
Closing thoughts…
Last week I also learned that a woman I used to read at another writing site died of cancer. I didn’t even know. We lost touch when the site died.
So here’s the thing…
When writers tell me they’re leaving, it makes me sad. I understand. I’m earning 20% of what I used to. When that happens, either the writer changed or the platform did. I don’t think I changed that much.
But over a decade after launch, Medium is still here. That’s rare and amazing. A lot of writing sites lived and died in less than a decade. Maybe you wrote at some of them. I know I did. It’s sad when a writing community collapses and people have to say their goodbyes.
I hope Medium is still here another decade from now. And the only way to do that is to provide a good reading experience for the people who come here looking for something to read. Whether they write or not.
When push comes to shove, we’re all here for the readers.
Thank you for being one of them. :)
P.S. If you’re a writer, you should go check out my Substack
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ― Marcel Proust