Tre L. Loadholt — Great thoughts. I am new to Medium. I wasn’t here the beginning of last month and when I joined (no halo), I couldn’t understand why the profiles for a lot of people said they had been a member since Mar / Apr 2017. I seriously thought for a few hours that Medium had only been launched in the past couple of months and I hadn’t missed out on anything.
Alas, not true. I had missed out on years of fun. But that’s alright. I’m here now. And it’s great that I have years of writing still left to read. Medium is a small slice of heaven on the internet. 10 on 10. Even higher if I could hack the scale a bit.
Then a couple of days ago, the new homepage got rolled out to me. And I understood a bit of what all the complaining was about. I suspect that if I had joined Medium now, I wouldn’t have much of a gripe with it. I wouldn’t know that there’s a treasure trove being curated off from me. But as my Economics prof used to say — people don’t care about absolutes, they are only affected by changes. He was talking of government policies but it applies here too. It wouldn’t matter to Mr. John Doe that his social benefits allowance is still one of the highest in the world if it had just been reduced by 5%. My Medium allowance has fallen and I notice what’s missing everyday.
Just like people find a way to survive in the real world in spite of unfavourable government policies, so have most of us on Medium too. I personally have bookmarked links to all my favourite publications on my browser, bookmarked the direct links to the Poetry, Fiction and Short Story tags and the link to my Network Stream as it disappears from the New Homepage sometimes. I have also bookmarked the curated Lit topic because even that disappears sometimes.
I bounce from website to website all day anyways, so I now just bounce off these new bookmarks. I’ll manage. I think. But I don’t want to just manage. I don’t want to walk. I want to soar. Medium has given me a taster of what it can become and I want the seven course meal.
What do I give Medium in return? I write my poetry here. I bring the sum total of all my thoughts, emotions, words, experiences, sorrow, joy, agony, rage, horror, jubilation, ecstasy. I bring my soul. I tell anyone willing to listen (and even those who aren’t) that they should have a Medium account. I share other people’s writings on Twitter and Facebook. That’s worth something, isn’t it?
Also, and perhaps more importantly from Medium’s perspective, I will be more than willing to spend time with Medium product managers. I suspect most of those who have spent time writing thousands of words of feedback will be willing too. I can sit on user groups, I can meet up or have phone / skype conversations with Medium PMs, let them record my behaviour as I use Medium. I will volunteer to beta test any changes. I’ve worked in an internet company and that’s gold. Some posts on this general topic come across as whiny but if engaged, I’m sure the non-listicle, non-self-help writing community will be constructive and go out of their way to help. We will be loyalists. We will write stories and we will bring readers. We have been and we will be Medium’s biggest cheerleaders.
There are things I love about the New Homepage. I like the curated Lit topic — most of the stuff there is worth a million green hearts, almost every writer worth an irresistible follow. I aspire to be on it someday, though I think there is a bias against stories on publications. As someone who is extremely un-famous, I get no readers if I don’t post on a publication. But I still aspire.
Those are the ways of those who write. Give us a place to write. Give us a place to read. Give us a place to explore and express without boundaries or limits. And you’ll own us, halo and all. Forever.
What is my Medium rating now? Maybe an 8. But as a writer, if I get 10 reads and only 8 recommends, I am cursed to wonder why 2 people didn’t like it. So dear Your Friends @ Medium, I expect no less worrying from you. An 8 may be an 8, but it’s way down from 10.
