Cuepoint

Medium

Screenshot as of June 2016.
Type of business	Private
Available in	English (specific publications can be in Spanish, or French etc...)
Area served	Worldwide
Owner	A Medium Corporation
Founder(s)	Evan Williams
CEO	Evan Williams
Industry	Internet
Products	Blog online publication
Services	Blog host social platform publisher
Website	medium.com
Alexa rank	333 (As of 21 November 2016[update])
Registration	Free access to articles written by registered accounts, but required for publishing and writing articles
Launched	August 15, 2012; 4 years ago (2012-08-15)
Current status	Active

Medium is an online publishing platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and launched in August 2012. It is legally owned by A Medium Corporation. The platform is an example of evolved social journalism, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications, or exclusive blogs or publishers on Medium and is regularly regarded as a blog host.

Williams developed Medium as a way to publish writings and documents longer than Twitter's 140-character maximum. It eventually grew into a separate platform independent of Twitter's brand.

Medium also has its own publications, including the online music magazine Cuepoint, edited by Jonathan Shecter; NewCo Shift, led by entrepreneur, author, and journalist John Battelle; and the technology publication, Backchannel, edited by Steven Levy.

Williams created Medium from the ground up, with the idea of encouraging users to create longer posts than the 140-character standard of Twitter. When it launched in 2012, Williams stated, "There's been less progress toward raising the quality of what's produced." By April 2013, Williams reported there were 30 full-time staff working on the platform, including a vacancy for a "Storyteller" role, and that it was taking "98 percent" of his time. By August, Williams reported that the site was still small, though he was still optimistic about it, saying "We are trying to make it as easy as possible for people who have thoughtful things to say". Users can create a new account using an email address or a Twitter, Facebook, or Google account.

The platform software provides a full WYSIWYG user interface when editing online, with various options for formatting provided as the user edits over rich text format.

Once an entry is posted, it can be recommended and shared by other people, in a similar manner to Twitter. Posts can be upvoted in a similar manner to Reddit, and content can be assigned a specific theme, in the same way as Tumblr.