Medium’s New ‘Friend Tier’ Is Here!

You’ve Got a Friend in Me(dium)

Back on Medium Day in August, CEO Tony Stubblebine mentioned a new program coming to Medium, the Friend Tier. And, finally — it’s here. I’m excited, I’ve been wanting to be someone’s friend for a while now; I knew it would happen to me one day.

*Breaks into a chorus of You’ve Got a Friend in Me, from Toy Story.

I’m going to do a quick rundown for those who ‘ain’t got time fo dat’ to read the official Medium post. Then I’ll bang my forehead on the keyboard until some sort of analysis falls out.

The Rapid-Fire Deets

Here is what the Friend Tier is, Eminem-style, spitting this shit wickedly spickety split lickety:

• It’s $15/month or $150/year (compared to the standard membership of $5/month or $50/year).
• On the friend tier, your reads will pay out 4X to the writers you read.
• You get a badge on your profile saying you’re a “Friend of Medium”.
• You can share Friend Links for any paywalled story — even stories that aren’t written by you.
• When people view your friend link, the author is compensated for that external read, via your membership.
• They’re rolling it out this week.

Ta-da! That’s the split-lickety-friend-splickety explanation.

The Badge Icon

I unfortunately don’t have access to the new Friend Tier yet. Boo-urns. They’re rolling it out over the next few days though, so I’ll have mine split lickety. In the meantime, here’s what it looks like, for those of us it hasn’t been rolled out to yet:

In the comments section, you’ll also have the new heart-icon badge, instead of the normal star:

How To Upgrade

You can get it in your membership settings (←clickity click this link), once it’s rolled out as available to your profile.

If you already have an annual membership and don’t want to lose your already paid-for booty membership, no worries — it is pro-rated so you don’t lose anything. That’s what Nanie Hurley 🌿 did, her membership wasn’t up for renewal and got a pro-rated amount so she only paid the difference.

My Thickety Thoughts

My slippity-brain-blickety thoughts are — I love it. I love that we can support writers here more, I love that it’s optional, and I love that people can share full stories of their curated reading with their friends (and maybe get some more people to join us Medium Madhatters).

A few notes

• The first thing I asked was does it reset your “Medium Member Since ___” date? Thankfully, no. Phew. Personally, I treasure that date and haven’t switched payment methods or switched from monthly to yearly billing just in case.
• My second thought was that anything with the word ‘tier’ in it could potentially create animosity. But I sincerely hope nobody here judges anyone who doesn’t upgrade. You don’t know people’s circumstances and it’s a lot of money. Especially for people in other countries since the US dollar is strong.
• They haven’t stated what % of the $15 will go to writers, only that it’s 4X. But they’ve never said what % of membership payments go to writers now either.
• Will it make you more friends? Yeah, it might. In my opinion, the most coveted readers will be the Friend readers (since their reads are worth four times more).
• People on the friend tier will not automatically earn more money, or have any increased writing/earning privileges. It does not hurt you as a writer to not upgrade. And again, I hope everyone respects people’s decision to friend-it-up or not.
• It will have zero effect on the boost program, or article distribution in general. As Ariel Meadow Stallings said in the comments of the post announcing it:

• The first 500 got a free Medium-branded tote bag. Not a solid strategy in my swaggety-baggety opinion, for something they’re rolling out in waves. Since it wasn’t rolled out to me immediately — now who’ve I gotta shank to one of dem totes?

How Does Paying 3X the Membership Payout 4X?

Another question I had was how does paying 3X the membership payout 4X? Then I did some guesswork and imaginary math and figured it out.

They don’t need the same % of the membership to cover their overhead.

For example, let’s say a standard membership puts 50% of its money into the writers earning pay out pool (this isn’t the real number, I just picked one for example math).

• On a $5 monthly membership that’s $2.50 to the payout pool, $2.50 to them for overhead.
• On the $15 monthly membership, they would only need $10 of that to payout 4X $2.50 to the pool.

So I believe how this would work is that Medium takes a smaller percentage cut (although in this scenario it is still a larger dollar amount than the classic membership) because they don’t have 3X the overhead for Friend users.

Will I Upgrade?

Yup. Whenever it rollety-rolls my way, I’m assuming in the next day or two (but they said it’s rolling out over the next week or so). Although, I am already paying $15/month and have been for a little while now.

Having multiple memberships allows me to do research for my articles that isn’t skewed by my own personal algorithm and data. It’s how I could see both versions of Patrick’s profile in the screenshots above.

I will upgrade — but I definitely won’t upgrade all of them. Just this profile, cuz, I’m a writer and that means I’m a brokety blokety.

~Robin Wilding, reporting from…a bathtub full of Cheeze Whiz.