As a Writer I Unfollowed Publications, You Should Too

My search for the heart and soul of Medium.

Photo by Luke Porter on Unsplash

I’ll keep this one short, sweet, and probably more than a little radical.

When I came back to Medium publications ruled my homepage, my suggestions, pretty much everything. I’m still working on building up my following and followed lists and I thought that a good mix of people and publications would be the way to go. So I both kept up to date and could spread my engagement to the widest range of writers.

Until I started to see a trend that all my article suggestions were overwhelmingly focused on showing publications. Considering that some people I found to follow already write for these publications, I ended up with was a list that seemed to exclude the non-publication writers I had on my list. Effectively hiding them from getting any real estate in my Medium experience.

If your as not down with this as I am, then I highly suggest you do something potentially unthinkable and unfollow publications. The funny part is that publications still take up a significant chunk of my Medium experience, however the articles are from actual people I follow and want to support with my time and attention. AND if I want to find new authors using publications I can still one click over to those pages and look through articles.

This has improved my overall experience of connecting more deeply into the writing community and that’s exactly what I want. If you do too then I invite you to give it a shot. At worst you can always go back and follow the publications again.