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Medium's new 'collections' curate the best articles on trending topics

Medium's new 'collections' curate the best articles on trending topics

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Medium is quickly evolving into a powerful, feature-rich platform for publishers, but today the company is taking new steps to surface its best content for readers. With new updates to its apps for Android and iOS, Medium is switching up the home screen to highlight new "collections," which are curated by actual people — not algorithms — and pull together the best articles about your own interests and timely events. "The top list of sections on our home screen will be a mix of popular verticals (like politics or culture) and more specific, timely events (think the Oscars or Apple vs. the FBI)," the Medium team wrote in a blog post. "You’ll be able to find new Collections in these sections every day, curated by Medium and a handful of trusted testers."

According to Medium, Collections make for an easy way of linking great stories, writers (and publications) worth following, and "other ideas from the web." The pitch goes as such:

We believe that in order to create a great reading experience for humans, other humans should be part of that process. There’s a unique sensibility that individual curators bring , whether that’s a specific tone, voice, or simply good taste. They can help act as a trusted filter for readers in guiding our limited time and attention to things that matter, calling out stories that haven’t yet been seen by many, helping to easily showcase the big stories of the day, or sometimes just adding a dose of weird and wonderful.

Right now, that's all being put together by a small group of "trusted" tester. But the ultimate goal is to let all Medium users build out their own collections to share with the community. "That's where the true power of this system really lies," the team said. So right now, yeah, it's really just a new and more intuitive home screen to help you navigate through Medium's content. But the far out ambitions sound much larger, which will likely please big names like Bill Simmons who are making a big bet that a popular (and premium) business can be built on and live inside Medium's walls.