Medium, the content creation platform started by Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone, has acquired Matter, the science and technology journalism startup cofounded by former long-time Guardian technology correspondent and GiGaOm writer Bobbie Johnson last year, for an undisclosed sum. This is Medium’s first acquisition.
Matter was initially backed by a Kickstarter campaign, raising $140,000 and attracting Williams as one of its 2,566 backers. It publishes long form journalism articles (over around 5,000 words) and sells them for $0.99 per article.
The company will remain a standalone company post acquisition but Johnson and cofounder, Jim Giles, will work with Medium’s editorial team.
In a blog post Johnson and and Giles explained there are no plans to stop publishing or to change the business model: “One of the things that made it easy to join Medium was the knowledge that the company believes in great storytelling as much as we do, and is prepared to support what we do.”
Medium – still in closed beta – lets users write, annotate, read and recommend content in a simple magazine like interface.
