Ev Williams

Words still matter

Medium’s mission — five years in

Five years can seem like a long time. Two presidential elections and three iPhone generations ago, things were different. And that’s when we started Medium. At the time, I wrote:

Our approach to member-only content

As a Medium member, you’ll have access to member-only stories about a range of topics and ideas that matter. While this exclusive content aspect of your subscription will start small — with the first pieces coming next week — it will become a dominant feature over…

Renewing Medium’s focus

We’ve decided to make some major changes at Medium.

I’ll start with the hard part: As of today, we are reducing our team by about one third — eliminating 50 jobs, mostly in sales, support, and other business functions. We are also changing our business model to…

Medium Adds to Board, Bank Account

Two weeks ago, we announced how we’re making our platform better for professional publishers, including brands. The response to that has been amazing. Hundreds of publishers have moved to Medium, joining our launch partners The Awl, Pacific Standard, and (soon) Bill…

Taking Medium to the Next Level

Two years ago, we opened up Medium for anyone to write. It was a new, well-lit place for an old idea: letting people share their stories, their ideas, their unique perspectives.

Medium is not a publishing tool

Twelve years ago, I was heading Blogger at Google and frustrated we kept losing users to our competitors, like Movable Type from Six Apart. A common phenomenon at the time was that people would start blogging on Blogger — because it was free, popular, and easy to set up …

I posted this internally to Medium employees November 18, 2013. See Hatching Inside Medium for more context.

Casual Content

Making small the right size for Medium

A Less Long, More Connected Medium

We’re making some changes to Medium. You’re going to love them.

I love a professionally reported 17-minute article about an important and surprising topic. Or a 10-minute technical mystery by a…

The One-Dayer

An idea for driving focus

I posted this internally to Medium employees February 12, 2015 (the same day I posted it here). See Hatching Inside Medium for more context.