Five months ago we challenged you to share your stories with us by writing into four powerful prompts: Death, Reentry, Work, and Space. Those prompts represented themes that were top-of-mind for a world in transition. Your 9,000-plus stories were incredibly transparent; the vulnerability on display made for hours of satisfying reading.
Judge Susan Orlean said, “The range of subjects and the variety of tone was exciting. It was a really strong group of contenders.”
The winner of the grand prize and death prompt is, “Keeper of the Place,” by first-time Medium writer Randi Ragan. Randi writes about her 74-year-old grandmother…
We’re working to make it easier to find, read, and follow what you love.
Medium is not just a writing platform, it’s a networked ecosystem where every story, writer, publication, and topic is connected to dozens of others. We’ve been working to make it easier to find meaningful content and connections; to make exploration and discovery easier.
As you may have noticed, we’ve been making changes to improve the app experience and if you haven’t seen them already, you will in the coming weeks. …
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
Some background
To date Medium has had around 100 topics readers can follow. 100 topics may sound like a lot, but in practice we’ve found that it can be limiting. Take the topic “Money” for example: what if you’re interested in financial planning but couldn’t care less about the fluctuations of the daily stock market? In the past, if you followed the Money topic, your personalized news feed would include stories on both of those subjects, and many more that fell under the broad umbrella of “money.” …
Grow your community, earn more money.
In 2017, Medium launched the Partner Program to further our mission of rewarding quality ideas by helping writers monetize their work. Since the program’s inception, participants have collectively earned more than $28 million. Now we’re giving writers more ways to earn money as they grow their Medium following.
Today, we’re announcing an evolution of the Partner Program that more directly ties writers’ earnings to the audiences they build. Earnings based on member read time will remain the same, but we are adding an additional revenue stream that gives writers more control over their earnings, while continuing to provide opportunities to…
Email subscription is now easier than ever.
Medium has two important jobs: connect readers with the stories and writers they care most about, and help writers find and grow their audience. It’s in that spirit that we’ve moved towards a more relational Medium: re-orienting the app around following, prioritizing writer discovery, and launching email subscriptions, which let writers send Medium story notifications to their readers’ inbox and build an audience list of readers who have agreed to receive emails off-platform.
Based on writer feedback, we’re making some important updates to email subscriptions that make it even easier to build a lasting, direct relationship with your most loyal…
Featuring judges Natalie Portman, Roxane Gay, Saeed Jones, Susan Orlean, and more
Calling all storytellers! When was the last time you read a great piece of writing? What quality made you want to share it far and wide? Why did it strike such a powerful chord? If you were asked to replicate that feeling — to craft an essay that leaves readers caught up in the rapture of an unforgettable narrative — could you do it?
We believe you could. You showed us as much in the past: the Pandemic Reflections writing prompt resulted in hundreds of submissions in the first month. Our call for entries to the #StopAsianHate blog resulted in…
Introducing lists: a new product feature in beta. Lists are an easy way to quickly organize and share stories, from personal favorites, to recommended reads within a topic or area of expertise, to themed lists around stories that inspire you. Want to save your favorite stories so you can revisit them? Organize ideas on the best writing on UX Design for your colleagues? Share helpful advice with friends? Tap the bookmark icon on a story to get started.
If you’re an avid Medium user, you may be familiar with the bookmark icon. Previously, it allowed you to privately save stories…
Removing spam accounts, and what that means for you
The relationship between readers and writers is at the heart of Medium. With that in mind, we want to ensure that your follower and following counts only reflect quality users. As part of our ongoing work to provide the best possible user experience, we’ll be removing spam accounts from your follower and following counts across Medium starting today.
What Does This Mean For Writers and Publications?
You may see a change in your follower and following counts. However you’ll gain a more accurate sense of your audience size now that follower counts only contain authentic, quality users. …
Medium is an open platform that exists to share ideas and perspectives from the world’s most insightful writers, thinkers, and storytellers.
Today, we are updating our Rules. As Medium evolves as a product, so do the ways people use it. To accommodate this, we regularly assess our rules, and adjust them accordingly.
Changes today include strengthening our rules regarding content that violates the Terms of Service of Medium or other third parties, and our policies on copyright.
To prevent copyright violations and plagiarism on Medium, we have written specific policies, which are now linked directly from our rules. As part…
Check out the new tag pages
Recently we’ve launched some updates to the tag pages on the web to improve discovery.
Tags are keywords and keyword phrases that are added to stories by the writer to improve story discovery and categorization. A writer can add up to five tags per story.
These tags appear at the bottom of a post, and readers can click these tags to see all similarly-tagged stories on Medium.
3 min read
The official Medium blog
