Why is clapping 50 times on Medium so difficult?
Find out why giving 50 claps takes a lifetime.
As designers, we have various ways to refine our thought process and sharpen our brains. For quite some time, I’ve been analyzing various features from popular apps and websites, and it has truly helped me gather insights that I earlier thought could be gathered only via usability testing and dealing with the problem yourself. Let’s face it, we cannot deal with all the problems in the world first-hand, but there’s no harm in learning from others’ experiences.
In this series, I will talk about various interesting features from popular apps and websites. These are my thoughts and they are completely open to discussion. So if you think I’m wrong, don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts in the comments.
Medium Claps
As you’re reading this on Medium, you must be aware of the claps feature. It is a way for the readers to appreciate stories. It also helps Medium understand you better. It tells Medium that out of all the topics you’ve shown interest in, which one interests you more. This, in turn, would help Medium suggest better stories to you. Relevant story suggestions have more chances of being read by you, and that means more readers for Medium. So, claps serve a very important purpose in content discovery.
But then from a reader’s perspective, claps could be a little irritating. If you want to clap once, that’s alright, no big deal. But if you want to give 50 claps to a story, there goes 15–20 seconds of your time you’ll never get back.
So why did Medium do it?
And the reason is…
Medium probably wants you to spend some time on it.
Let’s see what these claps would translate to in the real world.
- 50 claps = OMG! What an amazing story! I love it!
- 1 clap = Oh, okay, so you wrote something, I guess it’s nice. I’m a kind person. There, I clapped for it.
These reactions are far apart. So, shouldn’t they be far apart in how they are registered as well?
If the amount of time and effort required for giving 50 claps was the same as giving 1 clap, Medium wouldn’t know which of the above two reactions you had after reading a story. But with the current implementation of claps (although sometimes buggy), this problem is solved. Nobody would go through the effort of giving 50 claps if they didn’t really like the story.
If you like the story, please feel free to waste 15–20 seconds to give it 50 claps.
Special Thanks To
Prerna Pradeep, for helping out with the article. :)
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