Updates on Medium’s distribution system
Clarity on how distribution works, and a change to notifications
One of our most important jobs here at Medium is to connect readers with valuable stories. We’re always updating and improving our system to do that crucial job better.
Today, we’re taking a minute to clarify how distribution on Medium works. Until recently, our distribution system was binary, where some stories were chosen for further distribution across our network of Daily Digest emails, topics, and “for you” pages — and some were not. We’ve since evolved that system, and by default, most stories published on Medium are now eligible for distribution across the network (we do filter for spam, NSFW, and other stories that do not meet basic quality criteria). Your stories have always been distributed to your followers, and that hasn’t changed.
This also means that stories do not need to be curated to be distributed. There is no waiting period for curation review and approval; stories are distribution eligible at the time of publishing.
To better reflect the reality of how our system works, we’ve made a small change to our distribution notifications: We’ve decided to stop including the “chosen for further distribution” notification on the story stats page going forward. To be clear: Removing this notification does not mean that your stories are not being distributed. The vast majority of stories are eligible for algorithmic distribution upon publishing, and most stories now receive some level of distribution via our recommendations algorithm.
You can read more about how Medium’s distribution system works, where stories are distributed across Medium’s network, and what may disqualify a post from network distribution in this newly updated Help Center article.
We’ll continue to level-up Medium’s distribution system to meet the needs of both writers and readers. If you have questions or comments, please let us know in the responses.
