Tags Become Topics: The New Topics System on Medium

Tags are replacing topic pages — so you can write for audiences who care deeply about your subject matter, and find stories on any topic you love — from AI to Comics to Art

On 10th September 2021 Medium posted in its 3 Min Read blog that Tag Names will now become Topic Names. Topics will be expanded to become more personalized. This means that Medium users will now be able to follow former Tag Names. The Tag Names will become Topic Names. Here is a link to the article, followed by my thoughts.

With Tags being Topics now, as long as we can easily follow stories under Tag names somehow, apart from the Search function, this evolution will help get our stories read, I think. 😃

1. Medium’s background is that Topic names were too broad. For example, “money” ranged from stories about financial planning to the stock market. My reply to this is that the Topic Names were not too broad for some of us, such as me, plus if I wanted to narrow my search I would do a search upon my specific search criteria using the search function at the top-right of my homepage. If nothing came up within the top stories there, I would then choose a Tag Name to do a search. Just because the Topic Names were considered to be too broad doesn’t mean they should necessarily be thrown out, cutting off an avenue for those, like me, who did appreciate and read stories on the disappearing “broad” Topic Names.
2. The old Topics are going into the sunset, meaning they will be retired. This can only mean that curation or distribution will cease, because now Medium will be focusing on readers being able to Follow Tag Names which will simply be re-branded and re-named Topic Names. Rather than there being about 100 Topic Pages which Mediun pays curators to distribute stories under, because writers can and should add up to five Topic (Tag) Names to each of their stories, writers are virtually “curating” or “distributing” their own stories under their chosen Topic (Tag) Names.
3. Medium states: “Every story you’ve tagged has been ported to the new topic pages, so you don’t need to retag them.” To me, all this means is that all the Tag Names used by any writer will now become Topic Names.
4. Medium states: “The new topic pages are powered by an algorithm that sources stories from a wider range of subjects and authors than before. This enables writers to have more granular control over which topic pages their stories show up on, and increases the likelihood that you will be discovered by readers engaged in the subject of your work.” I believe this is Medium’s way of saying they have programmers who have now programmed the Medium software to create Tag names as Topic names. There should be no confusion among Medium users if they simply now think of Tags as Topics, and hopefully Medium will change the word TAGS to TOPICS. Writers’ work will be discovered because readers are able to follow customised Topic Names, formerly Tag Names. Granular control, i.e. fine control means the range of Topic (formerly Tag) Names will be expanded because they will now include former Topic names. This is just a way of saying we can do what we can already do, i.e. choose tag names (soon to be called Topic names) to tag our stories; but from when this system is fully-fledged, the number of available or existing Topic (formerly Tag) Names will be huge. It will increase the likelihood of your story being discovered only if you correctly tag your story with relevant Topic names AND if Medium has a good or effective “delivery method” to feed in story titles under Topic (formerly Tag) Names to all readers.
5. Medium states: “The algorithm will prevent some posts that might violate our rules and guidelines from showing on the topic pages, but the vast majority of posts will now be visible in the Latest feed of these pages.” What this means to me is that as long as you don’t breach Mediums terms and conditions, your story title will appear under the “Latest” category of all of the pages with the Topic Names that you tagged your story with (from the date that this scheme fully starts). Of course, how long your story title stays at the top of the “Latest” list depends upon the rate of stories and the number of stories with that tag, on the day that your story is published. Keep in mind that it may take an hour or two for your story to appear because of different time zones and the fact that behind the scenes there’s a programme putting everything together. Also keep in mind that some writers use Topic Names (formerly Tag Names) that don’t relate to their story but just use them to try to get traffic to their story. So this could cause unnecessary “congestion” of a story queue under a particular Topic (formerly Tag) Name.
6. My question (which I have asked Medium) is will Medium have a perpetual or never-ending directory or list of Tag Names, and place a link to it on our homepages? Years ago Medium had a link to the Topics Pages, shown below, on our homepages. If they don’t, then will the programme show us more story titles of stories under Topics as well as under People and Publications that we are following, on our homepage feeds, rather than suggest stories that are “Popular on Medium” and “Based on your reading history?” Will Medium retain the Topic Names labels and the Avatars of People & Publications being followed, at the top left of the homepages?

I think that the most important part of Medium’s article is the part that I’ve highlighted under Point 4. Writers’ work will be discovered because readers are able to follow certain Topic Names, formerly Tag Names, in addition to performing searches using the Search function at the top-right of the Medium homepages. It remains to be seen:

• How the new Topic (formerly Tag) Names will be found themselves, apart from, of course appearing under Searches. On our homepages will the current Topic labels at the top-left be the only links to the new Topic Page Names or will Medium place a link to a directory/list of all Topic Names?
• Will Medium’s programme feed a lot more story titles under the Topic Names that a person is following, on their homepage, rather than show “Popular on Medium” and “Based on your reading history” or in addition to these two? Speaking for myself, I don’t want to see what’s “Popular on Medium.”
• Currently the feed on my homepage shows story titles described as “Because you follow [ xyxz ]” where xyz is one of the Topics that I follow, and story titles “From your network” which are stories from People and Publications that I follow. However, I feel the feed is not balanced and has the titles of too many “Popular on Medium” and “Based on your reading history” stories. This would be off-set or okay if Medium put a link to a list of all of the Topic (formerly) Tag Names that I am following, because of course I could then go to that list to browse through the story titles.
• Now that we can follow “Topic names” which were former Tag Names, there will be a huge increase in the number of “topics” per se that anyone can now follow. It is vital that the “feeds” of these Topics are easily and conveniently streamed to readers, so that they can view story titles under their followed Topic (formerly Tag) Names.

For those new to Medium, in 2019 curation started. There were a number of stand-alone Topic Pages, and human curators would read stories published daily on Medium. The curators hand-picked stories to share under a relevant Topic Page. Gradually, Medium put less focus on Topic Pages, i.e. removed the link to Topic Pages on the homepages. This latest development is also a part of scrapping curation, which I always thought was inevitable, given that not having curation by Medium staff will also save Medium from the costs of curation.

A link to an update to this article is below.

https://readmedium.com/does-anyone-even-know-what-curation-is-anymore-a07bad24d48

Thanks for reading. You may be interested in the following stories!

Stay tuned for an announcement from Medium that “distribution” or curation will no longer be done.