Member-only story
What Having 2000 Followers on Medium Means to Me
Maybe about 120 readers?
Uncork the champagne, people. Last week I passed a much-anticipated milestone on Medium when I watched my follower count tick over the 2K mark. Thunderous applause. I know.
But all joking aside, I was curious about what it means to have 2000 followers on this website, so I got out my trusty spreadsheet and started entering data points for the last two months. I wanted to see if having more followers translates into more engagement. Spoiler: not much.
Every day, whenever the little white bell at the top right corner of the page turns green, I get a little rush of endorphins. Someone out there has interacted with me or one of my stories on Medium. I immediately click to see who it is and what they did.
Once a day, the notification says that “So-and-so + some other people started following you.” I like getting that notification, but for many months I have been thinking that those people are likely almost all not interested in me or my writing. It seemed to me that any people who have started to follow me, but haven’t bothered to clap for or respond to any of my stories, probably were just playing some sort of game. That was my hunch. But I wanted to check out the data to find out. So I entered every Medium notification I received in December and January into a…
