A few thoughts from my experience as reader and writer using Medium’s new clap feature the past few weeks:
Reader
I’ve read a few pieces recently that really resonated with me and I clapped a whole bunch. It felt good. It felt like I was able to quickly tell the writer just how much their story meant to me.
Writer
My mind was heavy this week thinking about all the hate talk. I wrote a piece talking about my experience with hate and how we can stop it (here’s the piece fyi). Two of the readers who liked the piece clapped 26 and 27 times. Seeing that # of claps felt awesome. I felt like my story really meant something to those readers.
I agree that using numerical scales and surveys to try and quantify how much we have satisfied a customer or a reader doesn’t really work. Here’s a piece I ironically read yesterday talking about the science you refer to in your post. This is the reason Netflix went away from a 5 star rating system to a thumbs up and thumbs down rating instead.
However, as we drowned in the deep end of content the internet has become (not blaming you 😉, but Hubspot definitely saw this wave coming and rode the Inbound Marketing wave better than anyone), we need more ways to find the signal in the noise.
If claps can give me a way to quickly filter for what stories are really meaningful to the people who read and like them, then I think we’re heading in the right direction.
I don’t think Ev and team at Medium are taking this change lightly. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. But I’m interested to see how the clapping experiment plays out.
In the meantime, I’ll feel good giving (and hopefully getting) lots of 👏
My purpose in life is to learn, grow, and help others. I write about what I’m learning. Want to learn with me? Join me here.