Medium wants people to eat their 'information vegetables'

Evan Williams, CEO of Obvious.

(Credit: Donna Tam/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and CEO of Obvious, wants to change the world that he helped create with platforms like Twitter and Blogger, by making his new platform, Medium, a model for curating quality information.

He said the tech industry's obsession with Web content creation has been about making it easy, and quick, for people to share real-time information. Medium, in contrast, is about creating collections of "better quality" content, Williams explained, going beyond the typical columns of text and sidebars, and working well with touch-based and mobile platforms.

Williams' vision is different from what media consumers have come to expect from Web-publishing tools. It's no wonder people were having difficulty understanding what the company had created when it released a preview of Medium in August. The platform organizes content through collections focused on specific themes.

Medium, he said, is not about what is new, which often gets more attention than it deserves. "Medium is trying to create different ways for content to be discovered and enjoyed," Williams said. The author is not as important, he added. "How content is discovered sh... [Read more]