Medium Took A Few Steps Back For a Giant Leap Forward
A Conspiracy Theory
I first came across Medium in the year 2014. The first story I read was either by Quinn Norton or Talib Kweli Greene… can’t really remember. After reading a couple more stories on the platform I then proceeded to write my first in March 2015. Fast forward to March 2017 and I am now a “Founding Member” on Medium. These are the steps I think Medium took to launching it’s paid subscription membership.
Small Step Number 1: Discovery
Back in the day when we all listened to analogue radio the process of tuning to the frequency that one was interested in lead them to hearing what was playing on other stations. This was the perfect environment for new radio stations. Actually this is one of the primary reason why one of the biggest radio stations in South Africa made it big. When Yfm, first launched it gained quite a significant listener-ship while they were still testing their frequency and playing local music that the youth resonated with none stop, no deejay talking what so ever! People discovered the frequency while tuning between radio stations and they stayed listening.
Times have changed and the Internet hosts the frequencies we find ourselves tuning into. The frequency being a metaphor for the feeds which we are subscribed to. And each feed is a plug to the next feed we will probably subscribe to next. Medium became my feed of choice if I plan to consume written content. I discovered it through links which were shared on facebook and Twitter. At first I ignored what I was seeing. But soon I started realizing that most of the best stories I was reading kinda had a similar UI. Gone were the days where I was reading stories on a wordpress blog that had a theme with bad CSS. Or a very distracting colour scheme. Medium took away personalization to focus on content. And writers feel in love with how it looked and how it was easy to write a story. And so they wrote some interesting stories on the platform and readers like myself ended up discovering the platform and staying on it.
The clean UI, impressive network of writers, engaged network of readers, simple recommendation system, well oiled publications and everything in between was what got me hooked on Medium. I kept discovering great content. Binge read some collections from great writers like Quinn Norton and Joel Leon. And as I was nearing the end of their collection’s I decided to read other stories on publications they were posting to. Which is when I discovered the publication Those People. Which had quite a diverse set of writers, each one with a story of their own that they were sharing with the rest of the world. And my favourite was Dominique Matti, which I discovered through her piece on the publication titled Why I’m Absolutely an Angry Black Woman. And I binge read her collection as well. The cycle went on and on and I kept discovering more and more great content and great writers. In this very unorthodox manner. Sort a like discovering new radio stations by just changing the frequency every now and then.
My homepage almost always had a new story for me to read. I loved it. I had multiple tabs open at a time (a practice I still do today). Medium had mastered how to push discovery. I read stories people who I follow recommended. I followed publications that published writers I recommended. And all of this feed the discovery cycle. And readers became writers because writing on the platform is so attractive.
Small Step Number 2: Seducation
I can’t remember properly but once upon a time I read something along the lines that seduction is the art of making one aware of what they want. Or was it seduction is the art of making one need what they are not aware they want? Whatever the quote was supposed to be, writers were seduced into this clean bare bones site which doesn’t personalize how their profiles looked.
The UI is so clean. That all you saw was what was all the things that were great about the platform. Like its vast network. How does a writer fight the seduction of writing a story on Medium? I myself couldn’t win the fight. Which is why I moved away from my Wordpress blog and started posting more and more on Medium. Even though I still have my Wordpress blog up because reasons. Most times I have something to right I come to Medium. And I’ve even recommended a number of people to start using the platform too. The platform is so attractive that I forgot I’m not even much of a writer.
Small Step Number 3: Experiment
One of the things that I noticed while using Medium was that there were times when no new stories were put up on my feed. December 2015 being the most significant time. I think I read more stories about how Medium was dying that month then I actually read stories on other topics. Medium had to do something about that. Which is when I started seeing more and more stories with that “Recommended Based on Your Interests” message on top of them.
Not taking away from the stories recommended by Mediums’ algorithm. I think I ended up binge reading some of Mike Monteiro work because of these recommendations. But I didn’t fall in love with most of the stories recommended by Medium. I actually even started avoiding stories with the “Recommended based on Interests” Tag. At first I only saw them on the mobile app, so to negate this I would browse stories on the browser and bookmark them to read on the mobile app later. This work around was sufficient to keep me reading the feed that I had come to love. But as the year of 2016 progressed the browser adopted more and more of these “recommended” stories. I would struggle to find a story that was writing or recommended by someone I follow. By the start of 2017 it had gotten so bad I even wrote a plea to Medium.
So, I guess medium while making these experimentations, kept a close look on the numbers. And when the time to do or die came they took the Giant Leap.
Giant Leap: Make Them Pay at All Cost
Here is a visual that best represents me reading the list of things I understood that I was gonna get by paying my $5 monthly subscription
Even though I only knew as much as Jon Snow knew about how this was gonna work. I went ahead and for the subscription. I was kinda impressed with the result from a readers perspective.
I think my Medium home page gets updated like three times a day? With sections/feeds for:
- Most recommended by people you follow
- Handpicked by Medium staff
- Popular on Medium
- You might like (those bloody recommendations I hate)
In that specific order! Funny thing. I only got to the “You might like” section when I was copying down the titles of each section just now. I hate recommendations! And if my behavior is similar to the rest of the users on Medium, I guess this is what Medium learned when they looked at the numbers for their “Recommend based on Interest” experiment. If you click on the title of the first section it takes you to a stream of recommendations of people you follow. This is the stream I feel in love with in the year 2015!
One other cool thing I noticed in the stream of stories recommended by people I follow is that the section sometimes contains stories that were recommended a long time ago by people I follow but which I still haven’t read. This I think will negate the whole “no new stories being put up on my feed” problem I mentioned early.
This effectively allows medium to funnel out stories one actually finds interesting at a more controlled pace. And it also elongates the chain of discovery. Which will help in the quite months when not that many people are writing stories. But also it would mean that more and more stories will get a chance to be read even after their “just published” buzz dies out.
Next Giant Leap: Give Back to the Writers
Medium will make money. And how they give that money back to the writers is gonna be a very interesting site to see. A lot can go wrong. But also they can revolutionize the game if they get it right. The whole Partner Program is one to pay close attention to. But also, how Medium is being ran as a start up is quite impressive. Everything is by design.
