I've been writing on Medium for the last three years and I am very happy to see the direction the platform is taking. It has been very gratifying seeing the continual increase in quality writers and content plus seeing my own following grow and being able to interact with excellent readers. Less clickbait and listicles are very happy making and I appreciate your efforts to improve Medium. The future looks bright.

I have two concerns. One is that it is still difficult to find content. The main feed gives me stories on topics I don't follow and authors I don't follow. Searching on a term or clicking on a topic tag returns poor results. Part of my academic research is exploring what people write on certain issues, so it would be nice to have a more robust search engine.

My other concern is that the Boosted award will have oversized importance. If it is the only way a story will likely be seen by anyone other than e-mail subscribers, writers will be forced to switch from writing stories for their audience to writing stories trying to guess what will get a story Boosted. It switches the focus from interacting with real readers to trying to cater to anonymous people who decide what stories get Boosted and clickbait is just traded for boostbait.

Oh, and could we, when we look at a member's profile, be able to see if they are following us? That would help grow community.

Again, thanks for all of your efforts.

Best,

Douglas