The creators of Twitter are at it again. Obvious Corporation has rolled out a preview of Medium, a content sharing site that they are calling “an attempt to make an evolutionary leap” in publishing.
BusinessWeek says “it looks a lot like a mash-up of Pinterest and Tumblr”. VentureBeat also lists Twitter, Flipboard, Facebook, and WordPress as seeming models for the platform. But Obvious aims to provide a platform focused more on the content than the creator. Rather than compile content from individual users through tags, Medium is organized into “collections.” Users will be able to post, comment, and vote on existing entries within open collections. The highest rated contributions rise to the top by default.
The preview looks like a forum for users to post creatively: an anthology of incredible true stories, a scrapbook of childhood photos. AdWeek points out that “as it stands, the platform would seem to initially appeal more to individuals rather than major publishers.”
Medium will be kept to a small number of contributors for the time being, as it is currently “just a sliver of what we’ve figured out,” wrote Evan Williams. Only time will tell where Medium will stand and how it will be used. We have high hopes.
