Medium at the Margins
A tale of two platforms
NOTE: Within this text, wherever gender is not key to the explanation, I am using the Elverson ey/em construction of the Spivak Pronouns.
Every social writing platform must establish norms in order to assure a consistent and meaningful experience for the reader. For this reason, the written word is curated. Much material is acceptable but the platform must also identify and promote the exceptional and exemplary. It is that curation that defines the culture of the platform. How can we best evaluate that culture?
I have been a Medium author since 2019 writing roughly two essays per month as the inspiration strikes me. With LinkedIn being my only other social media experience, I felt pretty good about my 250 followers and my 80 reads per post. In April of 2023, I was asked to start cross-posting to a different platform called Tremr, which I did beginning with Our Glorious Future with AI. For the first time in my “blogging” experience, I was able to compare reactions to my writing on two platforms. I was publishing the same material but the two platforms were reacting in different ways.
This prompted me to start paying more attention to the stats of other Medium writers causing me to realize that my 0.00013% share of the 200 million Medium readers was unusually low. I began reading posts by…
