Why Email Subscription is Important Now More Than Ever on Medium
I am quite lost without my Medium friend bubbles
To the Medium decision makers, I do hope you read my essay.
Ever since you removed my friend bubbles, I have been having a difficult time keeping up with them.
I know how much you value interaction and it is your wish that we foster the spirit of community you hold dear. But since you removed my friends I/we have been struggling.
Without the bubbles with their names and pictures, I can’t see my community members and I keep missing their stories.
I give credit to Medium for showing me stories they think I will find interesting, and sometimes I do. But I mostly want to see the writings of people I choose to follow. I made a conscious decision to follow certain writers because I resonate with them and their words. Together, we have built something special, we have more than a community, we have created a family.
While I appreciate the community spirit of showing me various authors and I am open to growing my circle and creating new friendships, I want to play in the same sandbox with my very own friends each day.
Unless there is another way to show my previous community “friend bubbles,” I humbly request the return of my bubbles 😭.
It was so much easier to keep track of their stories on the Medium home page, but now I am forced to go back and forth between Medium page and my email to find their stories.
Not good.
If I miss a day or two off the platform, imagine the purgatory I find myself in.
And even going back and forth between my email and medium, this is too tedious a task and reduces my ability to read and interact. Further to that it still leaves many of the people I follow out in the cold as I cannot/do not subscribe to everyone.
So, what’s a writer to do?
Read less.
I am frustrated at my inability to see the majority of people I follow and out of sheer frustration, I just close the app and doodle elsewhere.
Again, I beseech you, Medium decision makers.
I want/need to find my people again.
Thank you for returning to us the ability to create, edit and publish our stories from our handheld devices. I sincerely hope you will consider resetting our main page as we had no issues with it.
We want our communities to thrive and grow on our own terms. Our viewership and read ratios are down severely and our communities are suffering. Of course, this impacts our earnings too.
Except for those whose emails I subscribe to, I can hardly find anyone anymore.
We do hope you will consider our request, and help us to continue helping ourselves.
Sincerely,
To my Medium family, how much of a challenge does the loss of our “friends bubble” mean to you?