Does Medium Have An Alternative Universe?
Logic and reason have been my guides on my journey of living life for over 25-years, and they haven’t led me astray yet. If reasoning disrespects logic, I have to question it; if the answers still make no sense, I disregard the notion of further consideration.
A few weeks ago, an older article written by a Medium creator was brought to my attention by a fellow writer; this was done because there was a disagreement about the importance of claps. I said claps were relevant for drawing attention to potential readers, the other individual disagreed and sent me to the article in question, to give a rundown on how things work on Medium. In the process of my reading this article (which clearly stated claps were relevant for attracting the attention of potential readers), I discovered that there are supposedly 55 million members on Medium, this revelation immediately overshadowed everything else. My curiosity began to run wild with all types of questions, with the primary one being is there an exclusive group within this platform?
My thought of a separate group was brought about by simple observation: If there are supposedly 55 million people on Medium, and I’ve been on this platform for just over four months, but have never received anywhere near a hundred views a day for anything I’ve written, where are all these members? Either what I’m writing isn’t interesting, the number of members is greatly exaggerated, or a designated group of people are the only ones seeing my pieces. My conclusion was that it’s the latter of the three reasons because it made the most logical sense. I know that what I write isn’t the best this platform has to offer, just as I know it’s nowhere near the worse either. And as far as the number of members goes, even if it’s just 100 thousand members, I should be able to attract 100 views every day. I’m not referring to reads; I’m talking about someone just peeking in on my post, and leaving after a few lines. Peeking in doesn’t count as a read, but it surely counts as a view all day in America. So if there’s no exclusive group, and there are 55 million members on this platform, how is it that I’ve never received 100 views for anything I’ve written? Does this seem strange to anyone else or is my imagination running wilder than usual?
Then I paid close attention to the wording of the “Manage unlisted setting,” which I found to be very interesting: “Your story will be visible to readers and may be eligible for curators to recommend to interested readers based on your distribution setting. Recommended stories are part of Medium’s metered paywall.” Now when we check the box to make our stories eligible to earn money and we publish them, we positioned ourselves to earn money. But this excludes our stories from pay it can receive if curators recommend it to “interested readers,” where a “metered paywall” exists, this all seems like an exclusive group within a group to me, how does it sound to you? In their on explanation, Medium indicates that there’s a “metered paywall” that separates our stories from interested readers, who’ll only see our words if “curators” deem them worthy. Now, keep in mind this is all speculation, but you must admit it’s something to think about.
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