Medium
Think of Medium as your go-to place for breakthrough ideas and captivating tales. It taps into the brains of the world’s most insightful thinkers and storytellers, and curates the smartest takes on topics that matter. Medium is a prime example of a product that does not compete for attention, clicks and eyeballs. Here’s how:
Advertisement-free stories
As Evan Williams, CEO of Medium puts it, “The current reward system that drives content online looks like this: Attention = Money. Our attention is now tracked, commodified, and rewarded in a way that has huge implications”.
That’s why, unlike most publishers, Medium’s insightful stories are promotion-free. It does not have banner advertisements that take over our screens and follow us across the Web. In other words, Medium does not sell our attention to third party advertisers. Instead, it consciously chose to adopt a subscription-only model where the audience pays for quality content from writers.
Estimated read time
Most websites trap users in a never-ending scroll. Not Medium. Each Medium story has an ‘X Minute Read’ label that shows an estimated read time. Instead of tricking users into spending more time on the platform, there is transparency about how much of a reader’s time is required. This shows how the platform values people’s time and attention.
Claps
Medium traded ‘likes’ for a more human gesture. Claps (just as we would applaud in real life), are a way for readers to show their love for a Medium post. With this feedback metric, Medium captures meaningful data about what readers truly value. Its goal was to give readers a more satisfying way (rather than just tapping a heart button) of providing feedback to authors. Readers can choose to clap once or give a round of applause depending on how much they appreciated the story.
Source
3 Min Read
Medium
Designing Mindfulness