MEDIUM

Medium’s New Boost

Curations, features and now boosts?

Eight months ago, I noticed something new appear on my stat page one morning. “Chosen for further distribution,” it said. I’d heard in passing of Medium curation before but the prompt still left me a little confused. So I began doing some research. Even as I began to look into the matter though, I still remained unsure if there was a distinction between curation and distribution, and if so, what exactly it was.

The information I could find online on what exactly this terminology meant seemed to vary quite a bit. Neither researching the issue on Medium nor YouTube yielded much more in the way of clarity either, and this quandary wasn’t exactly one for the encyclopedias.

Depending on when the article or video was published, the information I was getting seemed to vary between slightly outdated and utterly useless. As months continued by and none of my pieces received that same distribution notice, though, I began to grow a bit perplexed now at just what I was doing wrong. But one day last September the issue grew even more confusing.

My article, The iFuture, got picked up for distribution and its views abruptly began to soar. But after a few days when they began to dwindle back down again, an even stranger thing happened.

Before I had even gotten a grasp on what distribution meant exactly, Medium was forcing me to reckon with the distinction between “Featured” and “Distributed.” As I continued searching around online for an answer, I still was finding next to nothing. I was entirely unsure where I was being “Featured,” but that my views had begun to skyrocket was undeniable. Within 24 hours, The iFuture would become my first piece to earn 1,000 views. By the next day, it would soar up to 2,000.

After having my first article achieve some semblance of viral acclaim, I was ambivalent about what to post next. The iFuture was on a subject that I’m passionate about, and attempting to recapture that magic seemed like it would be a trying task. I was fairly confident that whatever these mysterious curators or featurers were looking for, it wasn’t a niche story challenge about a Beatles-singing conch shell. So when Girl Meets Octopus got picked up for distribution a few days later, I was shocked.

For the next week, every piece that I posted continued getting marked with that same “Selected for further distribution” stamp. To my amazement, My stories about lucid dreams, psychedelics, 9/11 and growing up, even great aunts being hit with tomatoes each earned it. After being told that fiction stories weren’t eligible for curation, I was shocked to see that a longer suspense story I wrote landed me with another one of those tiny “Chosen for further distribution” prompts stamped onto my statistics page.

Eight consecutive pieces of mine were picked up for this additional dissemination that I still had yet to even understand. As suddenly as it all started, though, it stopped. After beginning to feel I could do no wrong in the eyes of the almighty curators, now none of my pieces were being curated, featured, or otherwise picked up for heightened distribution.

Once again I spent weeks speculating about what I was doing wrong. It wasn’t until I stumbled onto an article by the new CEO of Medium, Tony Stubblebine, that I got my first inkling of insight into the subject. The piece was about these changing rules that I’d been mystified with for the last couple of weeks.

According to the article, these additional distributions for authors were going to continue, but secretly. Whether our pieces had been selected by curators was no longer something that we would be notified of. Even while our stats could give us a clue that the piece had been chosen, the decision to let this process continue on quietly without informing authors of their specific successes here seemed a little confounding.

As months continued on, I let myself largely forget about the distribution system. And even while I noticed that certain pieces of mine did seem to be getting an additional spread of some sort, it was taking place almost entirely with external audiences outside of the Medium platform. It had begun to seem that repeating the success of that first piece to surpass 1,000 views might never again happen.

But two days ago, I woke up to an email from Medium that made me do a double take.

As delighted as I was to see it, I still wasn’t sure that I fully understood. That it was early enough in the morning that words were still a blurry jumble certainly didn’t help matters.

But a quick look at my Medium stat page seemed to confirm it. Forget features, curation and distribution… now we had moved onto boosts. And from what I could tell, it had certainly seemed to grow my readership. February was already poised to be the month with the most views I’d ever received. I was hoping that I’d hit 8,000.

But with the sudden near-exponential growth that this boost had enabled for me, I achieved 10,000 views for the very first time as of yesterday. Additionally, I accrued over an entire 24 hours of read time in my two highest paying days yet in my first year on Medium.

It’s pretty hard to believe that I caused over an entire day to be spent reading. My English teachers would be very proud!

I’m thankful to say also that Tony Stubblebine has actually done his due diligence in explaining just what it is that these boosts are offering and how they’re applied.

While I’m still a little confused on the subject — and I’ve still gotten no clarification on just what happened with those eight consecutive pieces that got picked up for distribution back in September — I’m feeling thankful for our new CEO and his clarity. Reading his piece describing the reasoning for the change, I couldn’t help but feel as though we’re in good hands. His receptiveness to fielding our input as we move forward here as a platform is exactly the sort of openness that I would hope for from a new leader.

You know what costs just over 3/5 of a gum ball per day? Supporting the aspiring writer whose article you just finished! Additionally, by the powers vested in me, I’ll grant you unlimited access to the work of all the writers on this platform. All you have to do is sign up through this link here! Can you spare the equivalent of just over 3/5 of one gum ball per day? 🧐