Listening shows up in the details

A few changes that wouldn’t normally deserve their own blog post.

Breana Jones
The Medium Blog

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Recently we’ve started being more clear about how much we value listening to our community. Or as our new CEO Tony Stubblebine says, :

“Help mold the future of Medium by telling us what is important to you.”

I’m one of the people who wants to hear from you. Seriously, hit me up in the comments.

One of the top things people asked for recently was to bring the editor back to our mobile apps. So, yes, we are working on that. We have iPhone and Android versions currently being developed and tested. We expect to launch these updates this fall.

We also heard your feedback on wanting a focused, simplified post page that prioritizes reading. We’re working on that now and we’re excited to share that with you soon.

How to report bugs

We try to catch bugs ourselves, but if you see one, let us know here.

A number of you have written in to say that follow counts on your profile are sometimes off. We’ve fixed a major cause of this bug and will continue to improve the way we track follow counts in different places.

There was also a bug in response notifications in our mobile apps where you could see who responded but not what the response said. This has been fixed in the most recent versions of our apps.

The point is, we’re working to improve Medium all the time and we’re going to talk more about it. We’re building in public and we know it’s a job that’s never done.

Making Member-Only Content Clearer

In the past, the only indication that an article was behind the members paywall was a small star.

When you hovered or clicked on the star, nothing happened.

An image of the Medium homepage with a cursor moving across the screen, hovering over a star and a tool tip appearing.
Example navigation of messaging to readers and creators who are not members

Now when you hover over that star, you’ll see a callout identifying that content as member-only. And when you click on that star, you’ll see one of three messages under the member-only label. The message depends on who is viewing it.

That first message is the most important for authors who publish members-only content. We want to help make clear to your readers the value of signing up for a membership. So it adds more explanation about the value of membership and includes a direct link to sign up.

The other two cases are about clarity. If you do have a membership, we show a reminder of how long you’ve been a Medium member. If you’re the story’s creator, we show a confirmation that that story can earn money.

Creators make their stories member-only because they believe those stories are worth your money. We want to make that as clear as possible for everyone.

What features would you like to see on Medium? Let us know in the responses.

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https://blog.medium.com/listening-shows-up-in-the-details-e09b55ad4878
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