Building Medium’s Internal Network

One of the big advantages of writing on Medium is that you have access to a potential audience of millions, right here on one platform.

The average Medium post gets a lift of 15 percent in readership, the result of our iOS app, homepage, and features such as Read Next and digest emails. We call this the “Medium Network,” which is mainly driven by two things: Recommends and Follows. The most popular stories have seen 50 percent of their traffic come entirely from Medium’s network; successful writers on Medium build a following and write great stories that then get lots of Recommends.

We’re in the middle of a series of experiments and iterations to build the Medium Network. We want it to be clearer to writers and publishers that they can build their own following on Medium, and we want it to be easy for readers to find writers and Collections to follow.

(You can see who you follow, and who follows you, on your Profile page. Connect to Twitter and Facebook to find more people to follow.)

We’re currently experimenting with a new email (available daily or weekly), which will make sure that readers have an opportunity to read every new story, and every recommendation, from people and the collections that they follow. We’re rolling it out slowly (and testing as we go). Let us know what you think of it.

Here’s my email from yesterday: