In a blog post published today, publishing startup Matter announced that it has now become part of content creation platform Medium. Both companies rely on publishing quality. In the blog post, Matter notes that we shouldn’t expect any drastic changes at either site any time soon but will see some starting to roll out in the coming months.
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Medium relies on the beauty of “open collaboration” where users can edit and contribute to each other’s ideas and pieces. Founder Ev Williams, who is also the founder of other innovations like Twitter and Blogger, aims to promote “openness” and quality.
Founders of Matter, Jim Giles and Bobbie Johnson, combine non-fiction authoring and in-depth magazine journalism. Having written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Economist and Wired they aim to bring the best of what journalism can offer to your e-reader or computer.
The company started out as a Kickstarter-funded project, of which Williams was apparently a first backer. Matter writes in-depth science and technology articles that are released at up and around 5 000 words a piece. These are then sold for US$0.99 per month for full membership. The Kickstarter campaign raised over US$140 000 worth of pledges with the support of over 2 500 backers.
Matter claims that it has started using Medium as a muse in coming up with stories such as Amputees and Wannabees. The company says it will “be helping Medium become an even better place for smart, thoughtful writing.” For now at least, both companies will simply be working alongside each other instead of recreating their approach and philosophies.
Although both companies hold the philosophy of liberty and quality very dear, it seems to be difficult finding the middle ground between the two. On the one hand too much liberty will flush the memes, LOLcats and trolls over the meaningful in-depth stories. On the other hand, too little liberty will defeat the purpose of open collaboration and wall off meaningful potential. Really interesting stuff.
