What Happens When a Story Gets Curated — Part 2
New things I discovered after 3 more articles were chosen for further distribution by Medium
It’s my 3rd month on Medium. Since I published Now I Know What Happens When a Story Gets Curated, three more of my stories got chosen for further distribution.
Pay particular attention to the publish date vs. curation date.
The Death of My Rolex (self-published on Aug 23) was curated the next day on a Tuesday.
Now I Know What Happens When We Engage with Members (published by Writers’ Blokke on Sep 1) was curated 4 days after publication, on a Saturday.
Hello, Genius. Meet Jedi (self-published on Sep 10) was curated 2 hours after posting. The status appeared around 10 PM Eastern on Sep 10 but stats show that it was chosen on Sep 11.
This tells me 4 important things:
- Editors work on Saturdays. You don’t have to wait for a weekday if your goal is curation.
- Self-publishing will not lower your chance of curation as long as you adhered to Medium’s Distribution Standards.
- If you don’t see “Chosen for further distribution” on the day of publication, check again 2–5 days later. If it’s still not there after 5 days, then it’s time to move on.
- Curation can occur on the same day, Friday nights included, and as fast as 2 hours right after you post. Could this mean that stories are simply scanned and selected by bots instead of human editors? I don’t think so, and here’s why.
I noticed that as soon as I hit publish, this appeared on the stats page:
The story was distributed either by email, IM, and direct as an “External referral.” I suspect it is received by the editorial teams as described here by Medium:
Medium’s editorial teams regularly review stories published on the platform, selecting those that meet our distribution standards and exhibit a high level of quality for additional distribution in Medium’s emails, apps, homepage, and more.
This should also explain the inconsistent review times. Humans are not machines and articles vary in length and quality; hence the turnaround time differs.
But why “external referral”? Why wasn’t it viewed from an internal Medium app or account? This really puzzles me. But I’m guessing the review has to be done from an external source using a non-member account so that the review itself will not be counted for monetization.
Then I noticed that the Tags I used sometimes didn’t match the Topic where the story was distributed.
For example, the Rolex article appeared in Topic:Self even though I didn’t use “Self” as one of my tags.
The Engage with Members story had the tags Writing, Creativity, Money, Mindfulness, and Self but was featured in Topic:SocialMedia.
The Tag/Topic mismatch is another proof that actual human editors (not bots) conduct the review. They are behind the assignment of Topic, and I absolutely salute Medium for that.
At the time of writing this article, Medium announced an important change with Tags and Topics. If you haven’t heard the news, here’s the link: Medium just got a lot deeper: expanding topics to be more personalized.
I haven’t really noticed any big change yet. What I know is that tags affect where your story will appear on the Tag homepages and how it will be offered as a Related Read at the bottom of your story.
The screenshot below was underneath Hello,Genius. “Careers” was one of the tags.
If your story is self-published like mine, the algorithm will suggest your other curated works under More from Your Name. Then recommend articles from a publication you follow as Picked for you. The third suggestion is an article with the same tag but by another author.
However, if your article is on a publication, Medium will suggest other works from that publication instead of your pieces. This is the reason why some writers prefer to self-publish.
That’s it for now, my friends. I hope that you learned a thing or two from these findings. My curious brain will continue to poke and speculate, and I am most grateful that we are exploring this together.
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.
— Bernard Baruch
