One way to understand things like Medium is as a privatization of viral dynamics. Remember the "slashdot effect"? That was virality caused by bored sysads on a dot org site (and how ribbonfarm got put on the map). Reddit is semi-private version of that. And Medium is all private.
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What this means is they a) grow distribution by aggregation to the point where they can run exposure lotteries b) create social mechanics (likes/claps etc) that artificial replicate things like the slashdot effect in the pioneer stage c) control of the lightning-strikes for $
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It's different in that it may shift intrinsic motivation, but also having a human in the loop might curtail some of the worst manipulations (I recall lots of slashdot, reddit, etc drama about manipulation of the ADD of readers).

