It Happened on Medium: August 2024 roundup
Most-shared stories, first-person perspectives, and Boosted stories from new writers
One thing I love about Medium is how multifaceted our knowledge base is, and how many writers from all different stripes come to write here. We’re trying to build the world’s best (and best-organized) library of incredible writing, across as many topics as possible. There’s so much of it that sometimes I forget exactly how much expertise, compassion, care, and knowledge we’re home to.
6.8k attendees and I were vividly reminded on Medium Day 2024. I attended six incredible and diverse talks, ranging from sports writing to an exploration of fascia, and learned something new in each one.
You know what else is easy to forget? Behind every blog post and story, there’s a real person. At every talk I attended, I was blown away by the speakers’ expertise and experience, how much they cared about their audience, and how open and willing they were to share it all — for free!
All in all, we had 6.8k attendees from 59 countries across the world. It was an incredible experience, and I can’t wait to do it all again next year. I hope to see you there! If you want to catch any replays, you can watch them on MediumDay.com if you registered. We’re also uploading the talks to our YouTube channel.
– Zulie @ Medium, Product Storyteller @ Medium
Medium by the numbers…
I love to understand how readers share stories and bring new readers to Medium. For this month’s By the Numbers section, here’s a peek into how readers found stories on Medium.
- You shared stories over 700k times on desktop and mobile, including sharing stories over 126k times on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
- Readers came to Medium stories over 9 million times from stories shared on X.
- Readers read stories recommended in their Daily Digest emails close to 5 million times.
First-person perspectives from the DNC and back-to-school season
There are some kinds of stories you can only really find on Medium — the stories from someone who was there, who did that, who experienced something first-hand and came to Medium to write all about it. (I liked how John Polonis put it, commenting on this story: “This is what makes Medium so powerful — insightful stories like this one about learned experiences. Going out in the world, doing things you’re passionate in, and then writing about it.”)
For example, many of us watched or read coverage of the DNC this month. Isaac Saul, executive editor at Tangle, was there, taking notes and names to share with Medium readers. One of the most surprising things he noticed? “The DNC rolled out the blue carpet for content creators and influencers, who received private lounges, free food and booze, and loads of access to big-name politicians. Reporters, meanwhile, were stuffed into nosebleed seats, left fighting for credentials, and battled shoddy internet and poor access to politicians.”
Meanwhile, it’s also back-to-school season here in the States. I haven’t got any college kids of my own, but I still loved writer jen murphy parker’s reflections on college tours, weaving in thoughts on how college seems to have changed in the intervening generation, how hard it can be to let your children go be grown-ups, and a few life lessons along the way.
“I tell my daughter we will go ask if we can join — there’s no harm in asking…The tour is excellent led by two students who dimensionalize their experience so fully that I feel I’m an enrolled student by the end… And [my daughter] admits I was, this one time, right. And I hope she remembers not just that, but that it’s always worth asking.”
August’s most highlighted passages
“The value of research doesn’t come from elevating people who are already shouting. It comes from finding the people who are not being heard, and adding their voices to the conversation.” — Pavel Samsonov, problem designer at AWS, in his story, “Nike’s $25B blunder shows us the limits of ‘data-driven’” published in UX Collective
“In short, almost all countries supported by Stripe are now supported with our latest expansion.” — Elvina Fan, Senior Operations Associate at Medium, in her post, “We’ve added 77 countries to the Medium Partner Program” published in The Medium Blog
“Treat people fairly, give them the benefit of the doubt, and if you need to reprimand someone always do it privately.” — Malky McEwan, writer and former police officer, in his story, “How to Challenge People Who Say, ‘It Was Just a Joke,” published in E3 — Entertain, Enlighten, Empower
10 of the most-read stories in August 2024
- The shortest, strangest engineering interview I’ve ever done,” by Daniel Brain, CTO and Co-founder of OneText
- “What’s new in Flutter 3.24,” by Kevin Chisholm, Technical Program Manager for Dart and Flutter at Google, in Flutter
- “Grokking, a New Form of Reasoning,” by Ignacio de Gregorio, tech writer
- “To My Unmasked Friend in the Fifth Year of COVID,” by Anna Holmes, YA / adult fantasy author and disability rights advocate
- “Why Would She Wear THAT to the Gym?” by Kelsey Schaefer, social media marketing consultant and CEO at Inspired Idiots, in Modern Women
- “Burning Man turns to DJs to sell tickets,” by Adriana Roberts, DJ and performer, in The Bold Italic
- “The UX job market REALLY sucks right now,” by Melody Koh 🤔, senior product designer, at Prototypr
- “The problem with growth: why everything is failing now,” by Joanna Weber, UX researcher and product developer at The Adaptavist Group, in UX Collective
- “Good Retry, Bad Retry: An Incident Story,” by Denis Isaev, engineering director at Yandex Cloud, in Yandex
- Musk Has Won — DEI Is Dead, Tech Is Bringing Back the Booth Bunny,” by Ronke Babajide, Manager System Engineering at Fortinet, in Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs
Most shared stories in August 2024
These stories found readers on both Medium and far beyond it.
“you cannot make someone love you by loving them harder,” by iris ୨୧, writer
“Suicide is About Wanting to Live,” by odawni, mental health writer, in Speaking Bipolar
“LLM Architectures Explained: NLP Fundamentals (Part 1),” by Vipra Singh, Developer Lead, Generative AI at Capgemini
Boosted stories by new writers
At Medium, we rely on human curators and community editors to help us find and recommend the stories that make Medium worth paying for. When we find those stories, we give them a Boost to help recommend them to more readers.
Here are a few of our favorite Boosted stories, written by brand-new writers to Medium.
“Selling Food as ‘The Great Inconvenience’ in Your Life,” by nutritionist Ruby in Rooted. A great story covering the intersection of food, nutrition, marketing, and history.
“Mr. Vance: Childless Teachers Are a Thing.” by Kim Stillwell, an educator of over 30 years. A thoughtful rebuttal to the idea that you need to be a parent to have a stake in our country’s future and a reminder that a woman’s worth goes far beyond her ability to birth and raise a child.
“‘You Can’t Eat Technology.’” by Adam DeMartino, the former CEO and co-founder of mushroom startup Smallhold. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how a farming startup tried to play the VC game by branding as a tech startup and failed because, as DeMartino says, “[w]e could have taken a slower, more sustainable growth path, but we chose the fast lane.”
For more great stories from Medium’s writers and publications, check out our Staff Picks. To learn something new from Medium writers every weekday, subscribe to our newsletter, the Medium Newsletter.
