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Eyeballs

Medium’s new metric

It seems writers here on Medium are going to have to adjust to a new, mysterious compensation system as if the old system of being rewarded for the number of claps a story received was easy to understand. For me, I sometimes felt that system was a bit arbitrary.

Time will tell if competing for the amount of time our stories have eyeballs on them will be easier to understand or if most writers will change the way they write. I’m guessing once we see how this works there will be changes.

Under the old system of being rewarded for the number of claps a story received, I always had an awareness that it was actually based on the number of eyeballs that were spending time looking at our words.

I never cracked the code for attracting the most eyeballs for the longest possible time spent staring at the screen.

One thing we know about getting people’s attention is that sex sells. Will there be an uptick in the number of stories about sex and the use of highly sexualized images? I want to think that we are above the use of cheap and easy gimmicks like this.

So, here’s to getting people to stare at their screens longer!