Ev Williams’ Medium acquires long-form journalism site ‘Matter’

Medium, the publishing platform startup founded by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, has purchased long-form journalism project Matter, the companies announced today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Matter was founded months ago by veteran journalists Jim Giles (formerly of Nature, The Atlantic, The Economist, and New Scientist and former GigaOm European reporter Bobbie Johnson. The site basically produces one 5,000-word long-form article per month, which it charges customers $1 to gain access to. Matter also successfully raised about $140,000 from a Kickstarter campaign that closed in February, and among the investors backing the site was Williams.

Williams himself has a solid background in publishing, having co-founded both Twitter and Google-owned Blogger platform. His new company Medium aims to offer tools, systems and services to support online publishing and create a “medium” between casual readers, contributors, and dedicated content creators. (Also, posts about Kevin Rose peeing.) Having launched in August, the service is currently in closed beta, but Medium’s purchase of Matter does shed some light on the direction its going.

“We have no immediate plans to alter the team, the places we publish, or how much we charge for each article,” Giles and Johnson said in a statement on Matter’s website. “More importantly, we have no plans — at any time — to stop crafting hard-hitting narratives about big ideas.”

Both Giles and Johnson will remain on Matter’s editorial staff.

Via The Guardian