Dear MEDIUM Contributors: What is with the Claps Feature?

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Avatar for cmoneyspinner
Written by
2 years ago
In community: Writing Tips(f94b)
Topics: Medium, Writers, Articles, Bloggers, Publishing platforms, ...

Hi! I know there are a few members here who also write for Medium.com and I have a question about something I just noticed. It seems kind of bizarre to me because I don't know WHY they would implement such a feature.

It's about the “CLAPS on Medium”.


You can give an article up to 50 CLAPS.

UUUhh ...?? OK! (I guess.)

I only ever click the Clap button once. If more claps showed it was because I accidentally clicked the clap button more than once.

How I noticed this was because one writer gave my article “11 claps”.

In the grand scheme of things, what is the point of allowing multiple claps?

It doesn't seem to be increasing my earnings.

Is it increasing my visibility on the platform??

I'm scratching my head. I understand the rationale for the Rewards feature.

Does anybody understand the “multiple claps” feature? What is it for?


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Avatar for cmoneyspinner
Written by
2 years ago
In community: Writing Tips(f94b)
Topics: Medium, Writers, Articles, Bloggers, Publishing platforms, ...

Comments

From what I have known is that claps are for somewhat a measure for appreciation, interest and quality of article. Nobody cares to give a lot of claps for you if at least they don't like it. Medium will check the usual amount of clap one gives out to others first. In that sense they will affect the ranking.

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User's avatar UnrealWriter
1 year ago

Although the number of claps can be thought of as a measure of article interest/quality, the fact that a person can give a lot of claps for an article can be misleading. Let's think of an article with 55 applause, it can be 55 people with an applause or 1 person with 50 and 5 with 1. At first glance it's the same, but I think the first case is better, since there has been more interaction.

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User's avatar PhoenixD3v3l
2 years ago

It happened to me. Few minutes after I uploaded an article, my claps was 100. But it was from only two users.

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User's avatar UnrealWriter
1 year ago

Yes. That's what I was thinking. To me there seems to be no point in allowing 1 person to give multiple claps. I have been on a lot of writing platforms. I don't think I have ever seen a feature like this. (O.o)

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User's avatar cmoneyspinner
2 years ago
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