The Optimal Response Format on Medium?

The prompt says write . . . but maybe not?

As I read through Medium’s first Town Hall discussions, I saw something new. As panelists engaged in real-time conversation via Medium’s Response feature, Jesselyn McCurdy of ACLU National began posting lightweight infographics as the lead-in to her responses.

That’s a clever tactic, ripped from the playbook of Facebook, where text-only status updates evolved into “lightweight” infographics before the infamous “20% rule” pushed brands and publishers towards photography and eventually autoplay video, which is poised to rule the Newsfeed.

Jesselyn’s posts made me wonder — is there an optimal response format for Medium conversations? Could one evolve beyond text? Would that be a good or bad thing for the platform?

I think the answer to the first two questions is “yes.” The remainder of this post describes what the first iteration of that optimal format could look like.

Lightweight Teaser Content and The Optimal Response

First let’s take a look at the post that inspired me . When I said that Jesselyn’s tactic was “ripped from the playbook of Facebook” I wasn’t kidding. Her graphic looks like a standard Newsfeed photo post (non 20% compliant), and the “Full Response” version is clearly designed for optimal resolution in the Facebook Newsfeed:

“Full Response” is displayed at the permalink; “Teaser” is appended below the article that prompted the response.

Recycling content from one platform to the other was a smart thought — especially when posting in a live conversation — unfortunately Medium’s CMS didn’t like the specs of the graphic and auto-resized it down in the Teaser version. That resizing had two consequences:

  • It lessened the impact of Jesselyn’s graphic, thereby decreasing the efficacy of her visual content.
  • It left a huge amount of wasted space in the Teaser post.

I spent about an hour playing around with different formats, and think that I’ve identified the optimal format for maximizing a response’s impact in the teaser format (impact = effective delivery of message and click rate to the full response). The graphic below lays this out in context of a full response post, but makes apparent what will appear “above the fold” in a teaser.

My breakdown on what is happening. Subject to change by Medium at any time, your mileage may vary.

(Update/Caveat: This only works on desktop. As far as I can tell, there is no way to make an image appear above the fold on mobile devices).

Is the Medium the Message?

This is great for writers — it could produce greater engagement with responses, potentially generating more legitimate conversations on Medium (rather than one-off posting). But is it good for Medium in the long term?

Lightweight images in responses could represent the first step down the same path that Facebook and Twitter have trod. Down that road, there be GIFs (and video) and, ultimately, a transformation of Medium into something closer to Tumblr — a post-literate media entity whose values are precisely the opposite of what has made Medium great. That statement is a bit extreme, but you can see the potential for a distinctly “non-Medium” experience to evolve.

Medium is a young platform, and norms of use are still in flux. How this shakes out will be determined through a combination of intentional design by Medium’s product team (katie zhu) and emergent use patterns from within the Medium community (elizabeth tobey). The only way forward is through — so optimize away.

This is part of an ongoing series about how Medium can build a more robust digital space for public dialogue. Click “Follow” next to Design the Debate, to get updates when new articles are published. Follow us on Twitter here.