Medium Experiments

Cracking the Medium Code — Day 6

Progress on the sixth day of the experiment to understand the medium algorithm

3 min readOct 18, 2021

We are almost at the end of my “Cracking the Medium Code” which is tailored to find out how the Medium algorithm compensates for the consistency in engagement and publishing. If you are interested to know more about the experiment setup read about it here. I will add the set-up and progress articles at the end of this story.

Today I got followed by 4 new authors. 1of them I followed back, but the rest three was not interesting. So as usual I headed back to “Recommended”. Today I noticed that my recommendations have drastically improved compared to the previous days. So seems like the Medium algorithm is starting to learn about what I like and dislike. Then I headed to the “Following” to do my regular read on the people I follow.

Daily Stats

Screenshot of author’s stat page by the author

Today is the 18th of October, 2021. As of 10.53 PM, I have got 31 views. This is an improvement from yesterday where I only got 17 views. It seems my view stats are consistently going up and down. Like one day it will be over 30 and the next day it will be under 20. However, today I also noticed something interesting. My stories about the experiment and its progress were always having very few views, but their read rates are 100%

Final Thoughts

We are now very close to the end of the experiment with only one day remaining. I have found that being consistent is really hard. I used to read throughout the day. But now since I have to track, I always wait until I finish my work and dinner to get back to reading. This time I usually spend watching Netflix or reading a book. I miss my after dinner free time as I have now been consistently reading on Medium.

However, it also looks like I am the only one being consistent. My view counts as I said earlier were inconsistent and going up and down. Let’s see what happens tomorrow. Bye for now!