Announcing Mozi

Ev Williams, Twitter and Medium Founder, Unveils New Social App

I think it’s tough to appreciate how much relationships determine the course of our lives — and how randomly many of them come to be. A chance conversation turns into an introduction, turns into a job, turns into a life partner, turns into moving across the country.

Sliding doors, every step we take.

There’s beauty in this randomness. Or maybe it’s not random at all. I’m not sure.

I am sure that most of the good things in my life — whether I appreciated it at the time or not — would not have come to be had I not happened to meet certain people and develop chance connections into relationships. Friends, collaborators, connectors.

(I also know that most of the stress and anxiety I’ve experienced has come from poorly managing relationships or associating with people I shouldn’t have.)

While I treasure and nurture my friendships today, I was not always so mindful about them. In fact, just a couple of years ago, I was trying to make a list of people to invite to my 50th birthday, and I had a sad realization: I didn’t have a robust set of friendships I felt great about given my stage in life.

I could point to many reasons for this: Covid, startups, introversion. Of course, everything goes back to childhood. I grew up in a very small town where I didn’t find a lot of people on my wavelength. While I desperately wanted to connect with people, I also cut myself off and developed a fiercely independent mindset. My strategy, at a subconscious level, was to succeed. If I could prove I mattered, by doing something impressive, people would come to me.

After a lifetime working at mattering, I realized I had under-invested in what really mattered: Relationships.

As I was making my birthday list, another, more practical, thing struck me: I had no go-to source for knowing who I knew. No online social network reflected my real-life relationships. The closest thing, by far, was the contacts app on my phone.

And, boy, was that a mess. I’m guessing, yours is too.

Why?

Twenty years ago, there was an internet company called Plaxo. There have been others like it, but Plaxo was the first big online address book. I remember thinking it was one those simple but profound twists on an old product that was now possible because of the internet, i.e.: Why do I have to keep details up to date for hundreds of people in my address book? Now that we have the internet, you can update your address in my address book, and I only have to keep mine updated.

It was an obvious idea. And here we are, 20+ years later, with address books full of partial, duplicate, and outdated information.

Perhaps the reason for this is that social networks (or the social network) solved this problem—for a while. When Facebook was ubiquitous it was probably a pretty good reflection of many people’s real-life relationships. It told you where they lived, who you knew in common, and all kinds of other details.

Another idea that seemed obvious was that, given how deeply social humans are, social products would dominate the internet. Ten to fifteen years ago, this seemed inevitable.

But something else happened instead.

Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their waking hours making “content.”

In other words, social media became…media.

To tell you the truth, I think there are positive aspects of this evolution (perhaps I’ll get into that in another post). But we clearly lost something. In the words of Ellis Hamburger:

I am here for the Japanese frog videos I see on TikTok. But in no way do I see them as a replacement for keeping up with friends and family — the goal of social media to begin with.

When you spend your life building internet platforms, it’s hard to quit the habit. So while trying to get a grasp on the people I knew to invite to my birthday, I started thinking: What if we did have a network designed for this purpose? Not just invites, but a map of the people we actually knew and tools for enhancing those relationships?

In other words, what would an actually social network look like?

Clearly, it would need to be private. Non-performative. No public profiles. No public status competitions. No follower counts. No strangers.

Perhaps it starts with a better contacts app. I started to look for one for my own purposes and I found quite a few out there with some nice features. But not quite what I was looking for. So I started building one.

When I say I had “started building,” what I actually did is write a two-page memo and hire a dev shop to build a prototype. This was shortly after I stepped away from day-to-day operations at Medium. And I was in no hurry to start another company.

Around this time, I went to a holiday party in San Francisco.

At that party, a woman (who wasn’t actually invited but snuck in with another friend) said hello to me because her friend had recently started working for me. That woman was Molly DeWolf Swenson. Molly and I became friends, and I learned that she was obsessed with the very problem that I had been thinking about. She kept a massive spreadsheet of her contacts in order to facilitate introductions and know who to contact when she was traveling.

She was also a multi-talented entrepreneur and operator starting to think about her next move. Once she expressed interest in what I was working on, I asked her if she’d spend some time with me figuring out if it was an idea worth pursuing.

After spending some time white boarding and talking and prototyping, we decided there was a compelling place to start: Solving the “where are my people and where are they going to be” problem.

Fast forward to today, I’m happy to announce our new company and product, Mozi — pronounced like moh-zee, as in “Let’s mosey around.”

It’s available for iOS now. (Android wait list.)

Mozi v1.0

Mozi is a social app — not in the sense of “social media.” But in the sense of interacting with other people and building relationships.

In fact, it’s not a media app at all. There is no posting photos or videos or liking or following. There are no influencers — except your friend who may influence you to meet up for a coffee when you’re in town.

The primary value proposition of Mozi (today) is simple: It lets you know when you’re going to be in the same place (city or event) as someone you know. And the goal is straightforward: to connect more often—and in person—with the people you care about.

For example, I just got back from Miami. Before going, I put my plan (just the city and what days) into Mozi. This information was shared just with my contacts (minus any I wouldn’t want it to be). So, even before going, I was able to see both the people I know who live there and other friends who were visiting at the same time, so we could meet up and make plans.

Mozi also helps you decide where to go. “Events” on Mozi (currently a beta feature) lets you see who you know may be going—or considering going—to a conference or event before you go. (If you happen to be going to SXSW, join the Mozi event. I’ll be there too.)

While Mozi is great for people who move around a lot, it’s also useful if you live somewhere people visit by giving you a heads-up when someone is visiting your city.

We soft-launched Mozi a few months ago and have been using it with a relatively small community. And even with this small group, we’ve seen “Mozi moments” happen on a regular basis — people getting together who otherwise wouldn’t have because they see they will be in the same place.

Mozi addresses the original problem I described by syncing with your contacts (all data is encrypted, and we never contact anyone on your behalf) and keeping their data up to date in your phone’s address book. And Mozi profiles give you useful information about your friends and people you meet (should they choose to share it).

Note: There are no public profiles, plans, or any other information on Mozi that is shared publicly. Everything is viewable only with mutual contacts (i.e., you have each other’s phone numbers). If you like, you can mark any plan for “close friends” only. And you can easily remove any contact you don’t want to see anything.

In other words, Mozi is the private social network that helps you build real-word relationships.

Part of my condition for starting this company was that Molly be the CEO. She was at the right stage of her career, had the passion, the drive, the relationship-building instincts, and perfect “market-founder fit.” She quickly proved this by recruiting an awesome team, who rebuilt the app from scratch in a beautiful and robust way.

(BTW, we are fully staffed right now but will be slowly adding to the team this year. If interested, please reach out.)

Now we are off to the races.

I am serving the role of chairman and work with the leadership team on product and strategy.

A lot has changed for me in the last couple years. I made a lot of new friendships and rebuilt old ones. I did a lot of growth and healing work. I now have a robust network of friends from coast to coast. Not because of an app, but because I prioritized relationships and invested the time.

I don’t think technology is the answer to our most human needs. But it would be silly not to use the tools at our fingertips to serve those needs. I love seeing when I will be in the same place as people I care about via Mozi.

I’d love for you to try out Mozi and let us know what you think. There is much more to come to build the private social network, but we are finding even with a few friends on the app, it’s making life richer and more connected (so tell your friends too :).

Thanks.

Can I assume when you’re in the zone
You’re not distracted by your phone
Should I hold my texts
And take time to reflect
Or fire away
Because you have it at bay

I don’t know
It’s hard to say
I turn on Do Not Disturb every day
I keep it that way
What’s the alternative
Disturb me, please
Yes that’s the affirmative

No thanks no way
I like my peace
I like my friends
But stop texting me, please

I’m just as bad, I have ADD
So let’s make a deal
Let’s all agree
The world won’t end
If we turn off notifications
Check now and then
And lower our expectations

How does it work? If it becomes law, ancestral lands inhabited by Indigenous people before 1988 will not be recognized as Indigenous territory. This severely limits the amount of land that is protected by Indigenous stewards, opening the rest of the Amazon up for accelerated commercial exploitation.

Why does that matter? Apart from being a vicious attack on Indigenous land rights, this hands the keys to the Amazon over to the mining, logging, and agribusiness industries. Because the entire world relies on Indigenous stewardship of the Amazon for a stable climate, this has global repercussions for everyone.

This makes me sick to my stomach, and I hope it does you, as well. We’ve all heard a lot about how important the rainforest is and how bad climate change is. It’s daunting. But this is a very specific action that will have devastating long-term effects if we don’t stop it.

What can I do? Right now, activists are hard at work lobbying the Senate to block this bill after it passed in Congress. However, the President of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, needs to feel much more international public pressure. The best way to help activists right now is to blast Pacheco on social media so he knows the world is watching. His handle is @rodrigopacheco (insta, twitter).

Here is a post from Brazillian youth activist Txai Suruí that you can share. (Feel free to repost the video.) Here’s her tweet. As both of those posts mention, there’s also a petition 👉 together.earth.

Getting hundreds of thousands of signatures there could make a real difference. Sign it and tell your friends.

What happens if that doesn’t work? Brazilian President Lula de Silva can veto the bill if it passes the Senate. He has already claimed that he will, but some activists are concerned that he has said this before on other Indigenous issues only to turn his back at the last moment. If pressuring the Senate fails, attention will turn to President Lula. But we’re not there yet.

Is there any other way to stop it besides relying on the Senate and the President? Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court is also simultaneously expected to rule on the constitutionality of this bill by June 7. Protests urging a favorable Supreme Court ruling are now underway in Brazil.

Original text via Earthrise

These are rather prosaic in the world of AI imagery these days, but I wanted to get a sense of what it was like to use these engines. And, well, it’s mind-blowing, impressive, sometimes hilarious, sometimes creepy — and quite fun.

Distropic is cool because you can fork off of other people’s prompts, so it’s collaboratively creative (which is where I got “cat playing piano”). But there are suddenly lots of other easily accessible UIs for playing with this stuff, such as this one from Hugging Face. I haven’t spent much time with DALL-E, so I don’t know how it compares Stable Diffusion or others.

The world is getting weirder by the minute.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

David Hockney

Pablo Picasso

Andy Warhol

Salvador Dali

Johannes Vermeer

Rembrandt

Frida Kahlo

Henri Matisse

René Magritte

Hieronymus Bosch

Vincent van Gogh

Paul Cézanne

Georgia O’Keeffe

Raphael

Edward Hopper

Claude Monet

Jackson Pollock

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Édouard Manet

Paul Gauguin

Edward Munch

Wassily Kandinsky

Georges Seurat

Grant Wood

Jasper Johns

Paul Klee

Mark Rothko

Roy Lichtenstein

Max Ernst

Willem de Kooning

Alexander Calder

Yayoi Kusama

Cecily Brown

Takashi Murakami

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

George Condo

Keith Haring

Barry Mcgee

Ellsworth Kelly

Addendum, courtesy of Philip Kaplan (creator of DistroKid / Distropic):

Banksy

Back in 2012, I wrote:

Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless, how do we increase depth of understanding, while also creating a level playing field that encourages ideas that come from anywhere?

For almost ten years, we’ve been striving to answer that same question. Along the way, we’ve given millions of writers and billions of readers a place to share and find knowledge and ideas.

During that time, we’ve never taken our focus away from our core beliefs: That people from everywhere and from all kinds of circumstances have valuable perspectives to share and are capable of doing so in thoughtful, articulate ways. And, also, that the world is better if they do.

That’s why Medium exists. We aim to make it simple to share deep thinking and easy to find the thinking that’s valuable to you. In a world of endless complexity, I believe those needs are universal and not going away.

In the process of serving this purpose, I’m proud of the work we’ve done to raise the bar for how the web looks and works, helped pioneer a healthier model for content that doesn’t hijack or sell people’s attention or data, and stuck to our principles when there were much easier alternatives.

In the next phase of Medium, I will still be involved, as chairman of the board. But I will no longer be running the company day-to-day. That honor will go to Tony Stubblebine.

Who is Tony Stubblebine?

Tony is a long-term partner of Medium’s and an even longer-term collaborator of mine. I first worked with him 17 years ago at Odeo, where he ran engineering. Tony went on to do his own thing instead of joining Twitter — several of his own things, in fact.

In thinking about who might replace me, Tony was one of the first people that came to mind. I then talked to a bunch of other people…and came back to Tony. He has deep knowledge of Medium from running some of the biggest publications on the platform. He understands the network and what creators need to succeed better than almost anyone. He has a clear POV on how Medium can be better, and a passion to make it so.

Tony is a builder, a writer, an open-minded thinker, and a keen businessperson. I’m confident Medium will benefit greatly from his vision, integrity, energy, and pragmatic leadership.

Thank you

Medium has always attracted great talent who want to do meaningful work. I am grateful to the hundreds of team members who have contributed to building Medium under my leadership — as well as the investors, board members, subscribers, writers, and others who have supported us.

To be clear, Medium’s story is far from over. The team today is probably the most capable I’ve seen at this company. I’m excited to see what they do.

I have learned a tremendous amount during my time as CEO. When you go to start your third or fourth company, it’s easy to assume you know the likely pitfalls and challenges you will face. And that’s true, to some extent. But every new company is like climbing a new mountain no one’s ever been on. Just because you have some basic skills doesn’t mean you know what lies ahead. There are always new mistakes to make — new ways to die. Navigating those is what makes this job endlessly challenging and rewarding.

As would be appropriate for Medium, I do plan to write more about my learnings when I have some time to reflect.

What’s next?

The primary pursuit of my adult life has been building systems that enable the exchange of knowledge and ideas.

In the time I’ve been working on it (dang near 30 years), the internet has gone from nerd hobby to the circulatory system that pulses through society on a 24/7 basis carrying virtually all culture, information, and entertainment.

The internet used to be about the internet. Now it’s about everything. And it affects everything.

A major thing that’s come to light since the early days is that democratizing media is a lot more complicated than we anticipated. I.e., there’s a lot of bad that came with the good. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying to create a better information ecosystem. In fact, isn’t that the reason we should definitely not stop trying?

I will continue to be interested in these types of questions — i.e., the kind that led to Medium (and Blogger, and Odeo, and Twitter). But I’m also interested in many other things.

Outside of lots of time with friends and family, I plan to spend the next few months (or years) learning as much as I can about things I don’t know a lot about. I also plan to start a new holding company/research lab to facilitate this learning, to be helpful to Medium and other companies I believe in, and to keep doing what I’ve always found most interesting — opening doors to the adjacent possible.

So much is possible.

Ev.

1. Keep listening at Odeo dot com.
2. Odeo: We put the O in podcasts and still have an extra O.
3. Do you hear what we hear? Odeo dot com.
4. Listen to more podcasts at Odeo dot com.
5. This podcast and more at Odeo dot com.
6. Believe everything you here at Odeo dot com.
7. Oh. We say oh. We say oh-oh dee oh. Odeo dot com.
8. There’s lots of podcasts at Odeo dot com.
9. This podcast is proudly listed at Odeo dot com.
10. If you are hearing this, then Odeo dot com has already won.
11. Hear hear! Odeo dot com is the place for podcasts.
12. Odeo dot come has tons of podcasts pass it on.

Call me for all your branding needs.

Today, I’m happy to announce that Medium has acquired Knowable, an audio-first learning company, to bring audio capabilities to our readers, members, and creators.

Having started a podcasting company in 2005, I’ve always thought that audio was a natural way to enrich Medium’s value proposition and deliver on our mission of deepening understanding of the world and delivering valuable ideas.

It’s obvious why spoken-word audio is growing in popularity. There are times for all of us when our eyes are busy but our minds are open.

The number one reason people say they listen to podcasts today is to learn new things. To better serve this need, Knowable has created a compelling new format: the audio lesson. It combines the conversational style of a podcast with the rigor of a great nonfiction book, all bundled into a bespoke app focused on helping more people build the habit of lifelong learning.

Knowable launched in 2019, and over the past two years has produced a library of audio lessons with hundreds of field-leading experts on subjects ranging from professional development to personal well-being. Featured contributors include NBA All-Star Chris Paul, record-holding astronaut Scott Kelly, and top TED speaker Celeste Headlee, as well as notable organizations such as MIT and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade.

Knowable will remain a standalone product, and co-founders Warren Shaeffer and Alex Benzer — and the Knowable team — are staying on board to lead Medium’s broader audio initiatives.

To celebrate the news, a Knowable subscription will be 75% off through the end of the year. Click here to check it out.

If you’re a book author, or industry expert, you can apply to be a Knowable creator here.

Knowable and Medium will be collaborating closely to help more people spread great ideas across text and audio. Stay tuned for more updates in 2022.

You can also read the Knowable team’s story here.

We’ve acquired Knowable to bring audio to Medium was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m excited to announce today that we’ve acquired Projector, a collaborative, multimedia design platform, whose talented team has joined Medium to innovate on the core Medium experience and build amazing tools for creators.

Projector launched in the summer of 2020 and is used for everything from presentations to social media stories to newsletter graphics. They’ve built a strong following with thousands of creators big and small.

With the Projector team come two experienced product and engineering leaders. Trevor O’Brien, co-founder and CEO of Projector, has previously led product teams at Coda, Twitter, and YouTube. He will join Medium as Chief Product Officer and have a seat on our board of directors. Luke Millar, co-founder and VP of Engineering at Projector, has led engineering teams at Twitter, Shift, and Microsoft. He will join Medium as VP of Engineering.

From my earliest conversations with the Projector team, I found their ethos very in line with Medium’s — empowering people to share ideas and stories through elegant tools. And our technologies are complementary. I truly look forward to integrating our teams and expertise to bring Medium to the next level.

Projector is an impressive, growing platform, but we do not plan to continue operating projector.com as a standalone service. It will continue to function through March of 2022, at which point we will be sunsetting the platform. Read more from Trevor on that here.

We’ll be integrating some Projector features into our toolset to uplevel the creator experience; more specifics to share on this soon.

Medium Acquires Projector, a Collaborative, Multimedia Design Platform was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An easier (but slightly less simple) method would be to use a wheelbarrow.

But what if there was a robot that could do the job for you at the push of a button? Simple? No, but super easy, assuming: a) It worked correctly. b) There was not a lot of setup or things to learn. If you had to first learn how to program the robot, it could be a lot more work than just moving the rocks by hand. Thus, not simple and not easy—not worth it.

Unless…you had to move a large pile of rocks every single day. Then it might totally be worth it to learn how to program the robot. 🤖

People talk a lot about making products that are simple. But simple isn’t actually the goal. Technology’s purpose is to save people effort and expand their powers. The simplest thing is to have no technology at all. We have obviously collectively decided that’s not ideal.

Instead of focusing on simplicity, my suggestion is to focus on power multiplication — how easily can one achieve the greatest/most desirable outcome? Simplicity is a great attribute, of course. It makes the mental task of understanding a tool easier. But simplicity in lieu of power is not always worth it, as many complex products demonstrate.

That’s my 🥘 for 🧠 for today. Thoughts?

So…yes?

Persons
Yelling, noisy people all around
Flaring up and calming down,
Down
Down through the gutters
In the streets
They flutter
And float
And romp in the bogs
Of life
Like dogs
Teasing flesh and chewing bones
Ignoring the rising tones
Of moans
And Death.

Don’t worry, I’m feeling better.