The Full History Of Medium Changes — As Explained by a Penguin

I lived through most of them and consider myself a product of the late Productivocene

In the beginning, there was the word and the word was Ev…. and on the first day he separated text from blank pages. On the second day, he separated titles from font. On the third day, he had a rest likely because he’s a busy sort of chap, and on the fourth day, he invented Algorithmia to run the site for him. The fifth and sixth day were absolute chaos and on the seventh day Umair Haque showed up to tell everyone how awful the world was.

I arrived here in 2018 and these are current Medium epochs according to one Penguin, not yet extinct.

The Wordacious Era (2012–2017)

In the beginning, there was no money, there was only the love of the word. This was the best of times and the worst of times. Those who decided to blog here did so because it was an excellent place to host their work. Many of the earliest adopters arrived here for the community. They read each other’s work and they clapped wholeheartedly for the sheer love of everything.

The Wordacious Era was cut short by the arrival of the FI comet. The Financial Incentive Comet, slammed into the Medium writer pool, cutting short the careers of many hobby writers. Below the FI boundary everyone was writing for the love of it, after the FI boundary — some people built massive money making careers here.

Enter the Kueglersaurus Rex.

The Early Productivocene (Mid 2017 — Mid 2018)

Medium moved everything behind a paywall and suddenly for $5 a month, you could read whatever was behind it. The money was carefully divided up by the number of claps an article got. Your $5 was divided equally amongst your claps. If you read a lot and clapped a lot you distributed smaller amounts to many writers. If you read a little, clapped a little you’d make hefty payments for your attention.

Evolution favoured upbeat cheerful advice with plenty of takeaways and for some reason Umair Haque. Productivity articles were the order of the day. If you weren’t up at 5am and distilling wisdom after your mediation and overnight oats — you were nobody.

Some big publications emerged, many of them now extinct. The Ascent was ascending, Writing Cooperative was gathering steam and The Postgrad Survival took its first tentative steps towards becoming the massive beast it was until recently.

But the Early Productivocene had a problem. When you measure things by claps — you punish writing that people disagree with. The only writing gaining traction was the upbeat go-getter stuff.

And so the Elevator Era came to pass.

The Late Productivocene (Late 2018 — Early 2019)

The Penguin emerges in mid-2018 into the Medium collective. The large cheerful serotonin beasts are still churning out productivity for claps at a ridiculous rate. Income is ridiculously high for some, smaller authors are struggling and bigger names bring their audiences to the platform to cash in.

And so the era of professional elevators begins.

These are editors who read things the algorithm picks up. When they find something they like, they e-mail the author directly. They offer additional editorial input, source better pictures, give your piece the once over. Taa Daa, the piece is ‘elevated’ to the homepage.

Back in the late Productivocene everyone had the same homepage.

Battling for supremacy amongst the productivity giants were a few newer writers, myself included. Elevation could make or break you back then. My best performing piece of all time was ‘elevated’ in December 2018. It’s still bringing in a few dollars a month even now.

A new brand of writers emerged, opinionated and individualistic. The indie writers were everything people wanted back then.

People like Shannon Ashley had the right amount of talent and were in the right place at the right time.

The Glorious Indie Revolution (Early 2019 — October 2019)

What a time to be alive. The Glorious Indie Revolution of 2019 had it all. There was elevator pitching, there was banter, there was productivity. It was a golden summer with lashings of ginger beer, picnics on the beach and people finding niches.

There was a huge change around the end of this era — Medium moved from the clap model of financial reward to the ‘reading time’ model. This was a huge shift that helped pave the way for longer more argumentative pieces and more interesting lengthy pieces.

So pieces like Aaron Gell’s Friend of the Devil he’d written back in 2011, published on Medium in 2015 was now presumably earning reasonable money.

It’s a 102-minute read and worth every second.

By now the productivity gurus had calmed down a little but the continued emergence of new publications was a sight to behold. Not a day went past without someone announcing they might put their own publication together. I did it too. I created ‘Lucid Nightmare’ around this time so I could write in my favourite genre — dystopia.

But with read time being a factor, Medium changed the game. They brought in salaried journalists and tried to game the system.

The Early Woketaceous (Mid 2020)

In one fell swoop Medium introduced about eight new publications. The editors who were previous elevators, plus a hundred or so others were tasked with creating publications.

Professional journalists were banging pieces out right left and centre.

It didn’t matter what story you wanted to click on, the story that opened was an op-ed about how awful Trump was.

The publications quickly centralised into a small cadre of journalists who got incredibly wealthy because the Medium publications were heavily pushed by the Medium algorithm. It didn’t matter how good anyone else’s pieces were, if it wasn’t in GEN or one of the six or seven other publications it was going nowhere.

Over the course of 2020, the publications merged from separate interesting publications into one big white-woke lefty-love-in. Bashing men and sexual emancipation were the order of the day. Got something interesting to say about empowerment and blowjobs? You flew off the imaginary shelves.

If you didn’t write that sort of thing, you probably thought about leaving the platform. I know I did. I came occasionally to read. I moved from my previous identity to Argumentative Penguin in May 2020 and rallied somewhat unsuccessfully against the centralisation of writing in this article about the Medium Paradox here… and against the continually falling standards of GEN here.

The rise of the white woke publication came first, before Medium realised it had become an echo chamber.

The Late Woketeaceous (Mid 2020 — Early 2021)

Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, we saw the emergence of new writers on Medium. Some of them weren’t new, but they were finally ready to step into the spotlight. Not ready to hand over the keys to the kingdom entirely, Medium created a new publication to capture BIPOC voices and white woke suddenly got relegated a little.

Empowered BIPOC writers suddenly found themselves at the helm of huge audiences with plenty to say, some of it cathartic and some of it educational. Rage would garner more clicks and follows and the algorithm would push popular things to the fore.

Bit by bit the nuance dropped away.

By early 2021 it was clear that the bubble of woke wouldn’t be sustained in the long run. Medium had become little more than a left-wing newspaper preaching to an already converted crowd.

There was only one thing left to do. Sack all the journalists and throw the publications away.

The Glorious Revolution of April 2021

In April this year, I came out of retirement. My pieces had long fallen out of favour with the left-leaning algorithm and I don’t have the patience for publications. Then Ev announced one day he was sacking the entire editorial team and relegating the Medium publications.

The age of the Indie writer was back. My income pretty much quadrupled overnight and pieces considered to be ‘controversial’ were suddenly finding an audience again.

By June 2021, it was clear the finances that had been used to prop up the failing publications would be redistributed into bonuses for writers. There was a lot of buzz and a whole raft of new writers joined.

That brought its own problems.

The Early Salescene

As this article catches up with today, there have been a few more pivots of note. The arrival of the referral fee has seen more people signing up and a proliferation of ‘how to win at Medium’ articles. New writers attempting to game the system and work out how you can make a five-figure income on here within your first year.

The MWC seems to have caught everyone’s imagination though god only knows what they’ll do next. It hasn’t been universally popular — particularly as it was won by someone who, whilst excellent at writing, hadn’t really paid her Medium dues. It was her first article on the platform — and she’s now earned more from Medium than many people who have been here years.

Right time, right talent, right place. $50,000 in the bank — not bad for a single article.

Most of the more established writers (including myself) have seen a drop off in our earnings since the heady days of the bonus giving and Natalie Portman being a judge. Some of the money has been pushed into the MWC and it seems there has been a flattening of the curation system. Curation, previously elevation is happening more and more but offering little in the way of boosting your story.

If you’re new here, you’ve picked an excellent time to begin your Medium journey. Ask the MWC winner if you don’t believe me!

What does the future hold?

That’s the million-dollar question — and the answer is, nobody really knows. Medium changes and pivots all the time. Your job is simply to take the rough with the smooth and keep writing. I did very well out of the shift from claps to read time because I tend to write longer pieces that people read to the end — after all, you’re still here aren’t you?

Poets and cartoonists didn’t do so well as their pieces are shorter.

I didn’t do well in 2020 but I have had a great year in 2021, unlike a lot of those people who dedicated their working lives to publications like PSILY and the ones owned by Medium.

Whatever happens, this place is always interesting. I suspect this era will see a boom in members and some interesting new financial models and algorithmic pivots. I don’t think we’ll see another $50,000 hand out — but we might see smaller prizes and a more egalitarian voting method.

What about you? What era are you from? What have you enjoyed and hated about your time here. What do you want to happen next?