Last year, Ev detailed our commitment to strengthening writer discovery, enabling readers to “serendipitously find stories they wouldn’t have otherwise.” In that spirit, we’ve launched blogrolls, a new feature that connects readers and writers in more visible and meaningful ways. Before getting into the details, here’s a little background on blogrolls for those unfamiliar with the term:
The term blogroll comes from the early days of blogging, when bloggers would often include a list of useful links on their blog (it was literally a roll call of your favorite links. hence, blogroll). It sounds simple, but before search and social…
Your domain name is an important part of your brand and clarifies the relationship forged between writer and reader. A couple years ago, we pushed pause on allowing writers to set up new custom domains on Medium. We did this because every feature on Medium should be frictionless and scalable, and the set-up of custom domains did not adequately satisfy either. During that time thousands of writers reached out, asking to bring this feature back. Last year, Ev detailed our plans to bring back custom domains:
Among other reasons, we needed to fix some cross-domain bugs and revamp our system…
See more of what you like and less of what you don’t
Medium’s recommendation system creates personalized stories tailored for you by observing your interactions such as reads and follows. Today, we are introducing a way for you to control your recommendations, where you can review and customize your interests, manage whom you are muting, peruse through your reading history removing specific stories or start afresh by clearing the history altogether.
You’ll notice control your recommendations in the user drop down menu, clicking that takes you to the main landing page.
There are three main sections to interact with: following, reading history and mute.
We’ve made it easier to find writers you love
At Medium, we strive to give readers and writers a place to connect, build their network, and spark meaningful conversation. One way to support this is by connecting readers to writers they already know and love.
Users who connect their Twitter account will now be able to find people they follow on Twitter who are writing on Medium.
Want to connect? Follow these three steps:
- Go to the Control your recommendations page and click on the Following section.
- Click Connect to Twitter under the Suggestions tab.
- Sign in to your Twitter account to authorize the connection.
Last year we launched a new responses experience for our users that reimagined how readers and writers connect on Medium. Today we’re excited to announce a highly anticipated upgrade: threaded responses.
Threaded responses will help readers and writers interact seamlessly and engage in dynamic, contextually nuanced discussions.
Before this change, you could only read one level of responses in the side-panel.
Now that we’ve introduced threaded responses, you’ll notice a reply button on the bottom right of all responses. You can tap on this and respond to existing responses that other users have left. This is what it looks like:
…
Today, Medium announced the acquisition of Glose, a social digital book platform based in Paris, France. Founded in 2014, Glose reaches more than one million readers in 200 countries. Boasting a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, Glose carries ebooks and audiobooks from all major publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster.
Medium supports a wide range of publishing, from short blog posts to in-depth investigative journalism, and everything in between. With the integration of Glose, Medium will have more than 1.5 million books available within its vibrant ecosystem. …
This year is hard to explain. Writers on Medium made sense of it all.
What just happened?
It’s hard to say for sure. There are the obvious things. The ways our world, and our lives, changed — probably forever. Hundreds of moments watching our colleagues freeze up on video chat. Then, awkwardly trying to tell them, “You’re frozen.” That’s just the beginning.
People have always turned to Medium to better understand the world and each other, and this year was the ultimate testament to that. We came here to figure out exactly… what’s going on. To connect with writers who informed, enlightened, challenged, and moved us. To tell our stories. To feel less alone…
There’ve been a lot of discussions about how shortform works, so we thought a quick primer might help. We’re also making an update to help shortform earn on Medium.
Shortform is any story under 150 words (including title and subtitle), and it is eligible to earn money if it is metered. Like all stories on Medium, shortform earns based on reading time on its story page, not simply viewing it in a feed.
A few months ago, we made reading more frictionless on Medium by switching to a single stream of stories on profile and publication homepages, making it easier…
Changes to the Medium distribution standards
Here at Medium, we’re creating a new model for digital publishing — one that’s based on story value, not ad value, and that’s predicated on the relationship between writer and reader. In ad-based publishing, the goal is to get readers to click and stay regardless of quality. That has led to the proliferation of something we’re all familiar with: clickbait. Clickbait works great in a system that’s designed to engage as many eyeballs as possible. That’s not our system.
On Medium, we believe you should stay for the story, the writer, the nuance, and the substance. This is how deeper…
Writers: Keep your readers in the loop by letting them subscribe to email updates. You own your subscriber list.
This past year, Medium has given readers and writers more control over the stories they see by emphasizing follows over algorithms. Now, writers, you can take your follower list one step further. Let your fans know when you’ve published something new from their email inbox, in addition to when they come to Medium, by adding the option to subscribe to story updates. You control which stories get sent and your subscriber list is portable.
We made the tool simple, here’s how to use it.
First, go to your Settings page and find a new Followers section. You’ll see the option…
