Hypothesis: Medium awards each author a single ‘bump’ for each story.

Abstract: The stories in your “For You” feed get there in 4 main ways:

• They were written by someone you follow.
• They were recommended by someone you follow
• They were tagged with a tag you follow
• Medium’s algorithm magic puts them there

There are times when a story seems to have fallen trough the cracks. It might have been posted on the wrong day, or at the wrong time of day. Going by the rules of the feed, it should be possible to ‘bump’ a previously written story back to the top of the feed of your followers by giving it your recommendation. I experimented by recommending a story of mine that was published on November 1st 2016.

Findings: So far none of my followers report actually seeing this story appear in their current feed. It seems recommending your own story does nothing but count one more green heart to the total.