Hello. My Name is Bebe. What’s Yours?

Medium’s newest change leaves out the writer’s name

There is one thing you can always count on with Medium. It’s going to change. If writers want to stick around, they need to stay flexible and be ready to pivot when the platform does.

I’ve been around for about three years, so I’ve seen my share of changes and adjusted accordingly. But this latest one threw me for a loop. As I was scrolling through my daily feed, something glaring jumped out and sent the alarm bells into overdrive. There were no names with the articles! I didn’t know who wrote what until I clicked on the story.

There were some exceptions. People who published independently had their name at the top of their story. I saw Roz Warren’s name pop up above her article.

I could also tell who wrote a few other things, because those writers have created their own publications to house their work. If I see something from The Bolt Hole, I know it’s Bridget Webber. But in every other instance, I had no clue who wrote it until I went to the story.

When Medium switched from claps to read time, I thought it was a good move. Read time rewards quality of writing. A reader has to be interested enough to read all the way through a story, although I was disappointed to see that the average read time on some of my five-minute articles was 59 seconds. But still, no more claps for claps (I’ll give your article 50 claps if you do the same for mine.) Quality counted more than ever.

Maybe the Medium powers that be figure this new approach will work the same way, rewarding articles for content only. But what it seems to reward is clickbait titles.

There are certain writers I like to read because of the quality of their work, and now they’re harder to find unless I visit their profile page to see what they’ve been working on lately.

After the initial shock of seeing stories without names, I immediately started thinking of solutions. How could I continue reading my favorite writers, and how could my followers find my stories?

One possibility is to stop publishing in pubs and publish independently. When you publish it yourself, your name pops up. But that approach takes away the advantage of having my story in a publication that has a good following. I miss out on the extra visibility, extra support, and extra sense of community that is supposed to be one of the major advantages of Medium.

Another alternative is to create my own publication to house my own work, but that’s an extra step I haven’t wanted to take. I’m interested in writing with no additional administrative duties. Also, you still don’t have the advantage of placing your work with a large pub.

I could promote more on Facebook and Twitter, but so far I haven’t gotten a lot of mileage from either of those platforms. Even in the Facebook writing groups, there doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage.

My most outside-the-box idea is that I could change my headlines to include my name. Here’s what happened when I gave it a shot:

“Trump and Biden Agree to New, Unusual Debate Format” became “Bebe Throws drinking game party for Trump/Biden Debate.”

“How We Can Do Good and Make a Difference” became “Bebe Waxes Eloquent on How We Can Do Good and Make a Difference.”

“What Every Medium Writer Should Know” became “What Bebe Wishes She Had Known When She joined Medium.”

Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? There’s got to be a better solution.

One saving grace of the new format is that a bunch of icons pop up with some of the writers I follow. I can click on those icons and go straight to their stories. But here again, it’s a mixed bag, because sometimes the icons aren’t there!

Now you see ’em, now you don’t.

I open my computer one time, and Medium’s recommended writers are ready for me; familiar faces of writers I love. But an hour later, they’re gone. Poof! Vanished!

What happened? Where did they go? Is it just me? Am I doing something wrong? Do your icons come and go, too?

How does everyone else feel about not knowing who wrote what? I’m sure I’ll pivot and adjust, like I have in the past. Nothing ever stays the same. Maybe this will even be good for me as a writer. I’ll be forced to pay more attention to my titles. I’ll probably have to branch out more. When we’re shoved out of our comfort zone, we tend to grow and get better.

But in the meantime, I’m going to go write a story and look for those missing icons. If you know where they went, let me know.