My Perspective of “Updates on Medium’s Distribution”
On 22 September an update to distribution was posted on the official Medium Help page at: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018677974 .
This was referenced by a blog post by Scott Lamb, Vice-president of content, on Medium’s official blog, the “3-Min Read.”
Here are my thoughts on parts of the article. I have put some words in italics for my emphasis.
“Until recently, our distribution system was binary, where some stories were chosen for further distribution across our network of Daily Digest emails, topics, and “for you” pages — and some were not.
My comment: “Binary” means two things, in this case some stories were “curated” by human curators, and some were not. This was until October 2020 when “chosen for distribution” replaced the “Distributed by curators in [ Topic Name(s) ] when the amount of human curation seemed to decrease.
In 2020 curated / distributed stories no longer had the Topic name of the dedicated Topic Page on the Detailed Stats page. Plus the phrase “Distributed by curators — — “ was replaced simply by “Chosen for distribution.” The article below is possibly one of few or the only one on Medium with screenshots of the curation process in place from 2017 until 2020.
Another big difference in October 2020 was that from then onward, the stories of non-paying members could also be curated by human curators, whereas before only paying members were eligible for stories to be curated.
“We’ve since evolved that system, and by default, most stories published on Medium are now eligible for distribution across the network (we do filter for spam, NSFW, and other stories that do not meet basic quality criteria).”
My comment: We’ve since automated that system and a programme or computer software filters out stories of particular undesirable content, and one way of looking at this is that there is more scrutiny of all the stories published on Medium, than compared to 25 human curators looking each day at what was humanly possible. [ Shannon Ashley stated in 2019 that Medium had said somewhere that it had more than 25 human curators, so I took the number 25 as a “bench-mark” or minimum in this article ].
“This also means that stories do not need to be curated to be distributed. There is no waiting period for curation review and approval; stories are distribution eligible at the time of publishing.”
My comment: A computer programme works out which stories are to be distributed (based upon identifying factors like key-words and who-knows-what). This has already been happening for a year or so now anyway.
Saying that a story does not need to be “curated” seems to me to mean that there may be no dedicated human curators now (or even starting back in 2020), meaning that just certain Medium staff will have included in their roles, scouting stories on Medium. If they see a self-published story that may be suitable for one of Medium’s Publications, they will refer it to the Editor of that publication.
Likewise they distribute to other distribution points (see the list at the end of this article), but keep in mind that the “algorithm” (i.e. computer programme) does most of the distributing.
I guess that the “algorithm” is used to crawl around Medium and find promising stories based on who-knows-what-criteria for the “Medium Staff Picks” (see upper right-corner of the homepage). I think that it is likely that certain Medium staff also recommend “Medium Staff Picks” stories that they like, and maybe go through what the computer algorithm picks up to decide what is added to the “Medium Staff Picks” list.
“We’ve decided to stop including the “chosen for further distribution” notification on the story stats page going forward. To be clear: Removing this notification does not mean that your stories are not being distributed. The vast majority of stories are eligible for algorithmic distribution upon publishing, and most stories now receive some level of distribution via our recommendations algorithm.”
My comment: Another clear signal that human curation is now limited. This is not a surprising “evolution” after Medium stopped creating and publishing dedicated Topic pages and stop sending out emails to writers that their story had been curated.
In 2021 Medium started calling Tags or Tag Names “Topics”. The dedicated Topic pages of old have gone, leaving Tag pages only. Prior to the “curation” changes of September 2021, Medium had dedicated pages for Topics that stories were curated to by human curators.
They are “normalising” the distribution (formerly curation) process.
In the near future, new members who won’t know that the label, “Chosen for further distribution” used to exist won’t, therefore, be eagerly looking for it (as writers used to eagerly look for curation emails and in-house Notifications).
Instead they will (hopefully) see the label “Distributed” on the graph for their story (under Detailed Stats) if their story is curated.
To some Medium writers, new or otherwise, the September 2022 minor changes won’t mean anything consequential or much.
The fact that the official Medium page states “we also have a team of human curators” may NOT mean they are putting emphasis on “distribution” given they also mentioned the same in 2020 — that they have “curators” who were or are Editors of Medium Publications (as aforementioned in this article, there are no longer Medium staff spending all day reading as many stories as they can to hand-pick some for distribution, which used to be called curation and meant curation under dedicated Topic pages, as I think used to happen).
See this historical information about the former Distribution process.
Distribution hasn’t meant and doesn’t mean a lot to many writers on Medium.
However, to me it means alot because I am not aiming for distribution of my stories in order to make money, as many would like “distribution” to help with.
I have a tiny dedicated following who actually read some of my stories on Medium. I would love my spirituality and personal development stories to be spread around a larger audience, in case they are of help to someone!
If you read the official Help Centre page on distribution, you will find the following.
Distribution to Medium’s network
Medium also recommends stories to readers across our website, apps, and emails based on their interests and reading habits.
By default, all stories published on Medium are eligible for further distribution via our recommendations algorithm (we do filter for spam, NSFW, etc). So in addition to being distributed to your audience, your story may also show up in the following places if selected by the algorithm:
• The “For You” section of the Medium homepage for all readers on the web and in our mobile apps.
• In Medium Digest emails: Your story may also appear in the digests of people who don’t follow you, but are interested in the topic you’ve written about.
- On Medium topic pages
My Comment: The response from Scott to a question I wrote that can be read here, is that the computer algorithm can and does add Topics to stories, which could then appear on the related Topic page(s), and possibly under “Related stories”.
To sum up, basically distribution means the following.
Certain story titles are posted via the computer algorithm or programme-
- On the Medium website homepage under “For You” and “Following.”
2. On the Medium website under “Related stories” for a story.
3. On the Medium app on the homepage/feed.
4. In emails based on readers’ interests and reading habits. Currently these emails are the daily or weekly Digest, the Edition, and the Creator Newsletter.
5. In or under Topic pages (formerly Tag pages) when the computer algorithm adds a new Topic Name to a story which appears in the Topic page in order of the date it was published.
I am not aware of how often Topics are automatically assigned to stories. Be aware that if you see the “Distributed” label on a graph for one of your stories, it doesn’t automatically mean the story will appear on one of the Topic Pages corresponding to one of the Topic Names that you assigned to your story. It may mean one or more of points 1 to 4 above apply.
6. In Emails that the writer opts to send out to Email Subscribers.
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