I may be one of the folks not part of the Medium community. I only visit Medium via direct links (on HN, shared on Twitter or shared directly to me by friends). I can't remember the times I've been on Medium's home page or opened up their app to browse.
If those direct links sent me to somewhere else entirely tomorrow I wouldn't care.
If those direct links sent me somewhere else tomorrow I would care, because odds are the alternative would be better. Medium is seriously annoying with its sign-in nags and large amounts of the screen taken up with unnecessary bars.
I just want to read an article. Medium is a worse experience than average in that regard.
I use the Web Annoyances Ultralist[0]. Blocks basically everything except the header (non-sticky of course) and the text, which ends up as a nice centered column on a white background.
But the ones who sent you those links would care. They want you to join the community, because of the network effects: having you there makes it more valuable to them. Each person there finds is more valuable because of the other people there, rather than just dropping by.
It's the same reason people have one Facebook page rather than thousands of small social networks. Even people who also participate in the smaller networks with a specific focus also have a Facebook page for their generic, lowest-common-denominator activity.
You may want to do nothing more with the Medium page than read it and leave, but they're going to keep pushing you do more than that. Despite the network effect there is still room for a few very broad social networks because they suit different communication styles. That's why Instagram exists. (It's also why Twitter exists; I can't figure out the merit there but its denizens seem to like it.)
Medium is one other such niche, for longer-form content. Or at least, they'd like it to be. It's not yet so big that the network effects are obvious, and that's why I don't have an account either. I was also very late to FB, and I still don't like it. But I'm there because the network effect of having all of my other friends there made it a thing I needed.
You can stay out of it forever, but you'll continue to get pressure to join until either it dies or you do.
> But the ones who sent you those links would care. They want you to join the community, because of the network effects: having you there makes it more valuable to them. Each person there finds is more valuable because of the other people there, rather than just dropping by.
I'm not sure your statement is 100% accurate. I know plenty of people who share a link just because it contains content worthy of reading. Sharing that content does not mean that you want others to join the community around it.
I am sure that other patterns of interaction happen on medium, but I know of no one for whom this isn’t their entire interaction with the service: it’s literally a hosting site that people are vaguely aware of because their modal has their name on it.
>I may be one of the folks not part of the Medium community.
The majority of people on earth are not part of the Medium community.
The problem is Medium still has a community of say a hundred million readers, and nothing else (which is a blogging aggregator) has a community just as large.
If those direct links sent me to somewhere else entirely tomorrow I wouldn't care.