Leaving ManyStories Was a Big Mistake
Every writer looking to grow on Medium in 2023 needs ManyStories — whether they like it or not
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ManyStories is a third-party platform created to help Medium writers reach a wider audience and expand their readership far beyond the pool of Medium.com users.
It’s now the sole product of Penname, created by software engineer Lincoln W Daniel.
There also used to be Smedian — a Medium publication leaderboard for editors seeking writers to grow — and Signal — an additional distribution network for writers to share content — within the fold. However, due to limitations on scalability, Lincoln shut them both down back in September 2022.
This was only a positive sign.
Here’s why.
ManyStories has been around for a few years now and its core is focused on laying foundations rather than rapid growth, which I admire.
That being said, a number of features have already been implemented in Beta mode to help improve the reading and publishing experience:
- Each week, they feature their top writers in a sidebar.
- The most engaged readers are featured weekly in another sidebar.
- For easy navigation, visitors can type inquiries in a search field.
- There’s a writer’s page where you can check out writer profiles and their stories.
- A ‘collections’ tab shows you stories that writers have curated.
- There are review and guide sections that feature member stories about the site.
- A carousel widget displays the writers’ names, story titles, and followers, and you can follow them if you wish.
- Additionally, there’s a display of the most-read articles/stories in a large carousel widget on the top banner.
- You can log in with your Google account or with your email address to share your story.
- Your articles can be shared by simply providing the website URL.
I appreciate all the work that’s been done so far with this iterative approach. It’s a business model that primes ManyStories to serve writers and their…