It was a smart move to redirect the Medium funds away from the professional journalists who used to run the Medium Publications - and back out to indie writers as a reward for staying with the platform. Perhaps apology money for being overlooked for a year? Perhaps incentive to stay rather than defect now that the curation has changed againWho knows?

As they move forward, I'm hoping they think about redistributing rewards in a smarter way. £500,000 is a lot of money to gift your writers - but not all writers are at the same stage in their writing career.

I think Medium should consider having a tiered reward system based on number of followers When you've got 100 followers or fewer, a bonus payment of $50 is very inspiring. You can give that to ten times as many people as $500 to a single writer - and keep your newbies happy. If you're between 100 and 1K followers, then maybe a $100 payment. You can give that to five people. Instead of two writers you now have fifteen motivated to persevere. There's not much point in gifting $500 to someone who already makes $5000 a month on the site. They're going to keep writing anyway.

I think Medium are likely to be considering their options. It was a wonderful surprise and a very smart move on their part. i hope they continue to roll out a similar system but spread the money a little wider than 1000.