Today, we’re fixing that. As part of a broader effort to reimagine how readers connect with writers and each other on Medium, we’re excited to launch an update to responses.

Previously, reading responses took you to a separate page like this:

Now, when you read through or participate in a conversation on Medium, you’ll be greeted with a fresh design, which unifies a story and the discussion happening around it.

Responses are displayed in-context, conveniently housed in a new side-panel. Like before, you can just keep scrolling to read every response to a story. You can still clap for responses you love and click through to read replies to any response.

Without leaving the story page, share your own thoughts quickly using a new, inline editor. And when you want to get back to reading, simply click anywhere outside of the responses panel to dismiss it.

We’ll be steadily rolling out this new responses experience to all Medium users over the next month. We know many of you have been waiting a long time for this, and it’s just the first of many planned upgrades to responses on Medium — all aimed at helping you have better conversations and build connections with other readers and writers. We’re excited for you to give it a spin and let us know what you think in the…uh, responses! 😉

A New Responses Experience was originally published in 3 min read on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’ve been a long-time Medium user, you may have noticed some changes we’ve made in the past several months. Or better yet, you may have not noticed some things that may have previously distracted you (or your readers) from enjoying what’s most important on Medium: the stories themselves, the ideas that matter. Earlier this year, we dramatically reduced the frequency and prominence of our in-product messaging prompts (sign up, open in app, etc) resulting in a far cleaner, more enjoyable reading experience.

What prompted this change? In the latter half of 2019, we took a hard look at the increasing number of pop-ups and prompts on our service. Although the numbers were telling us these were effective, the experience we were building felt wrong. Our prompts felt too intrusive, either because they needed to be dismissed to continue reading, or because they were simply taking up too much space on screen. We’d optimized into what drove the most clicks (easy to measure), at the expense of the reader experience (harder to measure, but incredibly important). So in early 2020, we did a complete overhaul of our in-product messaging, resulting in a cleaner, more enjoyable, ad-free experience.

What changed? Below are the most visible changes. It’s quite possible you haven’t noticed, because it’s what you don’t see, or what you see far less of, that changed.

1. Removed full-screen pop-ups (aside from our paywall).

The first step of our tidying up project was to remove full-screen prompts on free stories, full stop. These were our most intrusive units, because they looked/felt like ads, and unnecessarily interrupted the reading experience on stories that could otherwise be read for free.

Going forward, the only time we’ll interrupt a story with a full-screen pop-up is when it’s truly necessary: either when you’re trying to take an action that requires login (e.g. highlight), or when you’ve read your limit of member-only content, and have hit the paywall.

2. Redesigned our “meter” (our member-only content messaging) to take up much less space.

On Medium, some of our content is “member-only,” meaning unlimited access to these stories requires a paid subscription. You can enjoy a limited number of member-only stories for free each month, before encountering a paywall where we prompt you to subscribe to continue reading. To let you know you’re reading member-only content, and to let you know how many stories you have left, we include messaging in-product (often known as “the meter”). Although this messaging is important, the way we were serving this messaging was not optimal. Our meter notification was quite large, often taking the form of partial or full-screen prompts that needed to be dismissed to continue reading. Recently, we redesigned our meter to be far more minimal (see below), and provides a point of education, versus interruption, in the reader experience.

3. Redesigned our “open in app” prompts to be less intrusive, more user-friendly.

The Medium app (on iOS and Android) is the best way to read Medium on a mobile device, so making it easy for readers to download our app, or open a story in the app, is hugely important. However, if someone chooses not to download the app, or doesn’t want to read in-app, we completely respect that decision. Previously, we had a persistent “open in-app” pop-up prompt at the top of every story, that even after being dismissed would often (and annoyingly) appear again. We’ve since replaced this pop-up with native messaging in our top navigation bar (see bottom right), and are continuing to optimize our “open in app” prompts to serve them to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

What happened as a result of these changes? To our writers and readers, seemingly nothing — they’re enjoying a better Medium experience, which is exactly what we were after.

What comes next? This tidying up is only the beginning. We’re building an even better writer and reader experience on Medium in 2020, and this initiative has helped us build a stronger foundation for what’s to come. We can’t wait to show you more.

How Medium is Improving its Writer and Reader Experience was originally published in 3 min read on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2017, we launched the Medium Partner Program to fairly compensate writers for their quality stories, with unlimited potential to earn. Since then, we’ve paid more than $6 million to over 30,000 writers, increasing payouts year over year.

Today, we’re excited to announce an updated earnings model to improve how writers earn for their stories through the Partner Program.

Instead of paying based on claps as the main signal, we will now reward stories primarily based on reading time, which we’ve seen to be a closer measure of quality and resonance with readers. To increase transparency and provide richer insight to our writers, we will also introduce new stats so it’s more clear how a story’s earnings were calculated.

Here’s what’s changing as of October 28, 2019:

1. We will calculate earnings based on the reading time of Medium members.
   We’ve found that the time that people spend reading your story reflects quality more accurately than the number of claps it receives. We want to listen to input from more of your readers, not just the ones who remember to 👏. Claps will remain a great way for readers to support stories they love. When your readers clap, they’ll boost your stories to a wider audience. And as more people read, you’ll earn.
2. We will include reading time from non-members too, once they become members.
   If a reader finds your story and subscribes to Medium in the next 30 days, you’ll earn for their reading time.
3. Your earnings will be updated daily, not weekly.
   We heard your feedback that it’s confusing to only see your earnings as a weekly sum. In order to minimize your time spent cross-referencing your calendar, we’ll calculate and update your earnings daily. We will still send payments once per month, which you can track via your Partner Program earnings dashboard.
4. Your story stats will show new metrics to explain your earnings.
   We will be clearer about when your readers’ views do and do not contribute to your earnings, so you understand where your earnings come from. Along with a set of upgrades to your story stats page, we’ll now show your story’s daily member reading time — a new metric that directly contributes to your earnings.

Below we’ll describe how we will calculate earnings in greater detail.

How we calculate your story’s earnings

From the start, our goal with the Medium Partner Program has been to reward the quality stories that resonate with readers.

We recognized a broken status quo in traditional media, where advertisers were the ones indirectly paying for writing. Ultimately, this system rewarded the lowest common denominator, rather than encouraging creative autonomy and truly serving readers.

At Medium, we’ve created a different path. Your stories are directly supported by readers’ membership fees, meaning everyone’s incentives are aligned. And you can focus on what matters: writing.

In our new calculation, we’ll include two parts to your earnings. As always, we plan to continuously improve our model as we learn — and we’ll keep you informed along the way.

1. How long members spend reading your story.

As Medium members spend more time reading your story (“member reading time”), you will earn more.

We’ve improved our story stats page to show both your story’s daily total member reading time and its daily earnings, so that you can understand how much you are earning over time and where your earnings come from. Note that you will still be paid once per month.

When we calculate your story’s earnings, we’ll also include reading time from non-members if they become members within 30 days of reading your story. So we encourage you to share your stories widely!

2. How much of their monthly reading time members spend on your story.

By calculating a share of member reading time, we support authors who write about unique topics and connect with loyal readers. For example, if last month a member spent 10% of their monthly reading time on your story, you will receive 10% of their share (a portion of their subscription fee).

Imagine an author writes about fly fishing. She finds an audience of fly fishing enthusiasts who subscribe to Medium primarily to read her stories, meaning she receives a strong share of reading time from each of her readers. In contrast, an author who writes about a wide variety of topics might receive smaller shares from a broader audience of readers, who also read a variety of other authors. While the generalist will often earn a lot through the first total reading time part, the fly fisher is well equipped to earn through this share part — even with a smaller audience.

Reading time

Reading time is the time that someone spends actively reading your story. As a user reads, we measure their scrolls and take care to differentiate between short pauses (like lingering over a particularly great passage) and longer breaks (like stepping away to grab a cup of coffee). Reading time incorporates signal from your readers without hurdles. You don’t need to ask your readers to remember to clap, or click, or do anything other than read.

We believe in reading time because it represents the core value that our readers receive from Medium. It may not be a perfect measure of value, but we find that it’s a powerful proxy.

We know this is a meaningful change and the details are important, so we’ve put together this FAQ on Partner Program payments. You can also find other articles in our Help Center about writing on Medium. If you have questions, you can respond to this post below and we’ll do our best to answer quickly.

We couldn’t be more excited to bring these updates to the Partner Program. We believe it’s critical that creators are fairly compensated for their work, and we’ll keep improving in service of this goal. Thank you to all of our writers — we wouldn’t exist without you sharing your stories with the world.

Improving how we calculate writer earnings was originally published in 3 min read on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.