Twitter Founders Debut Medium.com

Medium.com, a new publishing platform from Obvious Corp and Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, is in soft launch mode. It is designed to group users’ posts, including text and images, into themed collections, and place the most favored posts at the top of the page. The idea is that quality content will rise to the top and reach people because it is based on rankings instead of how many friends or followers a user has.

Here’s how Williams described Medium in a blog post dated Tues., Aug. 14:

Medium is designed to allow people to choose the level of contribution they prefer. We know that most people, most of the time, will simply read and view content, which is fine. If they choose, they can click to indicate whether they think something is good, giving feedback to the creator and increasing the likelihood others will see it.

Posting on Medium (not yet open to everyone) is elegant and easy, and you can do so without the burden of becoming a blogger or worrying about developing an audience. All posts are organized into “collections,” which are defined by a theme and a template.

Collections are sometimes closed but optionally open to contributions.

Collections give people context and structure to publish their own stories, photos, and ideas. By default, the highest-rated posts show up at the top, helping people get the most out of their time in this world of infinite information.

Together, the contributions of many add up to create compelling and useful experiences.

As of today, everyone (with a Twitter account) can read and give feedback on Medium. Posting is limited to a small invited list of friends and family, which we’ll be expanding rapidly—soon, to those who have registered, so if you are interested please do so.

Below is a sample page from Medium.com.