Member-only story
How Moving to Mastodon Killed My Medium Views
Here’s why I have no regrets and would do it all over again
Have you ever felt like you were riding the wave on Medium, only to hit a wall that seemed impossible to climb? That’s exactly what happened to me when Medium opened the doors to Mastodon.
At first, I was thrilled to join the Fediverse and engage with a new community, but little did I know that, haphazardly, it would disrupt my writing journey.
However, I’m not one to back down from a challenge, and I decided to turn chaos into a ladder for audience development.
Please keep reading, and allow me to tell you how I did it. This is the true story of how one switch to Mastodon sent my Medium earnings plummeting.
With gratitude, I humbly welcome your support as I climb my way back up.
It all started in January 2023, when Medium made waves in the Fediverse by launching its very own Mastodon instance on me.dm.
I had to wait a month, but by the end of February, I received an email from Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine inviting me to join the stampede.
Medium was allowing authors to claim a “fresh, short Mastodon username like @yourname@me.dm” matching our Medium profile.
I rushed to join the fun, but as I clicked the link to create my me.dm account, I hit a snag.
Turns out, my Medium username, “rui-alves” wasn’t Mastodon-friendly. The platform only allows letters, numbers, or underscores in usernames, and my hyphenated handle was a no-go.
Now, I was faced with a tough decision. Should I ditch my blog’s brand name and go with a different username? Or should I try to keep my brand consistent across platforms and figure out a way to make it work?
I opted for the latter and fired off an email to Medium support, explaining my predicament.
I explained to them that “Rui Alves” was my brand in the blogosphere and a trademark I was building on Medium and beyond. I asked if there was a way around the issue.
Within a day, I received a kind reply from Medium support with some terrific news.
