Medium is where good ideas find you, either as inspiration to create and share your writing, or as high-quality articles to discover new voices on the topics that you care about the most. With Medium, the focus is on content rather than on looks, so the reading experience is distraction-free and minimalistic.
Free and Member accounts
A free account on Medium allows you to keep up with your favorite authors and publications, engage and interact with them and their content, save articles for future reading and, if you feel inspired, even share your own stories! By the way, a free account on Medium is not ad-supported.
The benefits of upgrading your account and becoming a member are twofold: for both you as a user and also for authors. There are two kinds of membership subscriptions:
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Medium Member
Medium Members can read paywalled stories while supporting their author and helping them earn money. You can also earn money for your own stories, create publications, set up your custom domain, and access the exclusive Mastodon community. If you get the mobile app, audio narrations and downloading stories for offline reading will also be features you can count on.
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Friend of Medium
Friends of Medium are members who contribute more to both, authors and the Medium community. By reading members-only stories, writers receive four times more money! Also, you can share “Friend Links” to allow non-members to bypass the paywall and read members-only content, which also benefits its author. On top of that, Friends of Medium can also enjoy all of Medium Member benefits.
Availability
You can experience Medium to its fullest from your computer running Windows and macOS, on the Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge browsers. But I guess if you’re here it’s because you’re interested in writing, editing or reading on the go. In that case, to get the best reading experience on mobile you should download the app for your iOS or Android device, from the App Store or the Google Play Store respectively.
When you download and install the app, you’re asked to choose three or more topics you’re interested in. This is one of the ways Medium personalizes your reading experience, as your dashboard will soon be filled with stories and suggestions based on the topics you selected, and also on the writers you follow and the stories you read or interact with.
Interacting with content on Medium
Medium excels at giving its users the possibility of reacting to its wide library of content. There are a number of things you can do if you enjoyed a story you read:
- Clap: you can show your support by tapping the “clapping hands” at the top or bottom of the story.
- Save: bookmarking a story allows you to add it to a reading list.
- Listen: an audio version of the stories is available for Medium members.
- Share: let others on Twitter (X), Facebook and LinkedIn know about the story by sharing it directly from Medium,
- Highlight: it’s as simple as it sounds, but you can do some things with your highlighted text:
- Write a response: share your views on the story you read or the section that resonated with you.
- Generate a Text Shot: the highlighted text transforms into a tweet.
- Write a private note: comment directly and privately to the writer.
The more interaction a story receives, the more likely it’ll be featured in users’ homepages.
In conclusion
The Medium app is perfect if you want to access lots of interesting and thought-provoking articles on many topics, and also if you’re interested in sharing your own view with a community of fellow readers and writers. The free account is good enough for you to give it a try, but you should seriously consider subscribing to take advantage of Medium’s multiple benefits.
