A Clap Is Like a Slap if You Do It Only Once

A vital public service announcement for Medium participants: Clap more than once or don’t clap at all

It’s one thing if you want to haul off and smack someone, although I don’t recommend it.

It’s quite another if you bash them unintentionally or, as is almost always the case, you meant the opposite:

• You wanted to say “Hey, I liked your story and I’m happy to let you know.”
• What you really said was “Meh, I could take it or leave it. But since I’m here, you get one lousy clap from me. You’re barely worth my time.”

Clapping: Find a Happy Medium

Clapping doesn’t mean what some people thought it used to (money for the author), and it never did. But you should still do it.

It’s true that clapping won’t make you or the author any money, at least not directly. More on that in a moment. Only time spent reading does that.

And by the way, if you don’t scroll all the way to the bottom of an article, the writer doesn’t get a Read credit either. That’s a key reason your stats show so many more Views than Reads.

So why does Medium have a clap function?

I suspect the person who originally designed the clap function had a theory about how it would be used. And maybe Medium did once use it that way.

In the meantime, we’ve descended into the long, dark night of chaos.

Why can you clap more than once? How and why do you clap 50 times? What does it all mean?

As far as I can tell, claps serve two primary functions:

1. They introduce gamification into writing, meaning we want to compete to get more of them
2. They are a signal of a story’s potential interest

Medium tries hard to get us all to write like crazed monkeys competing for extra bananas. Medium is not the worst social media platform, but the system is filled with clever incentives. Fine.

Two Ways Claps Signal Interest

1. The number of people who clap tells the Medium algorithm something.
2. The number of claps readers give tells potential readers something.

Medium gives greater emphasis to stories that have more fans.

A fan is someone who has given at least one clap. You will see notifications when your story hits 10 fans and 50 fans, and likely more. (I’ll let you know if I get there.)

Readers are tempted to read stories that have more claps.

That’s an indication that it resonated with other readers.

But a potential reader can’t tell on its face* whether a story with 100 claps had 100 miserly readers who each gave but one clap or two generous fans who gave 50 claps.

Why Not Accomplish Both Goals With Your Claps?

Unless you are a heartless bot interested in nothing more than feeding the Medium algorithm, your one clap accomplishes the first goal but not the second.

But if you genuinely liked the story and want to let others know it, your single clap barely moves the needle. Thus the opportunity to clap more. How?

Just press and hold your finger or cursor on the clap icon and the numbers will magically rise from 1 to 50. It goes quickly. You can get to 50 claps in about 10 seconds.

Are We So Busy We Don’t Have 10 Seconds?

I get it. We’re all busy.

I read lots of stories. Am I really going to give 50 whole claps to all the ones I like?

Here’s the thought process: “I read 20 stories today and liked them all. If I gave them each 50 claps why that would be 200 seconds of clapping time!”

“That’s three minutes and twenty seconds of my life I’m never getting back. Oh, wait.”

Yeah, exactly. Even assuming you’re a prolific reader, we’re talking a few minutes in total. And in return, you’re signaling what you thought not just to the author but to every potential reader.

If you want to smack the author, figuratively speaking, go ahead. But don't do it by accident.

Be well.

* You can see the details of exactly who gave how many claps for any article. To do so, simply click on the number next to the clap icon (View Claps).