Evan Williams, the serial tech entrepreneur who co-founded Twitter, said in a post Tuesday that he is stepping down as chief executive of Medium, the company he founded and which aims to reinvent internet publishing.
Mr. Williams — known in tech circles as “Ev” — said in the post that he planned to start a new company that would allow him “to learn as much as possible in the coming months (or years) about things I don’t know much about it.”
Medium declined to make Mr Williams available for an interview. He said in his post that he left Medium because “change and renewal are healthy”, noting that August will be his 10th anniversary as chief executive.
“To be clear, Medium’s story is far from over,” wrote Mr. Williams.
Medium said Mr Williams would be replaced as chief executive by Tony Stubblebine, who is currently the chief executive of online coaching company Coach.me. Mr. Williams will become the chairman of Medium’s board of directors, a new position.
Mr Williams had great ambitions for Medium when he founded the company ten years ago. In a 2014 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Williams said he hoped to create a company that would reward writers for producing quality content, counteracting the Internet’s propensity for speed and quantity.
While Medium managed to create a sleek online canvas for independent publications, it never achieved the breakthrough popularity of Mr. Williams, Twitter. Medium has taken several strategic paths, sometimes irritating writers with his sudden shifts in focus.
For example, in 2017, Medium was one of the first online publishers to move away from advertising, a move that resulted in about 50 layoffs and shocked publishers who depended on guaranteed funding from the company. That same year, the company focused more on subscriptions and started a program that compensated writers determined by an algorithm that took into account the number of “slaps” they received from readers. Reading time, not clapping, is now the main factor determining compensation.
Other newcomers like Substack and Ghost have lured online writers as independent digital publishing has shifted from blogging to email newsletters. (Medium also offers an email newsletter tool.)
A spokeswoman for Medium, which is privately owned, declined to provide detailed financial information for the company.
in mr. Stubblebine, Medium has a chief executive who is familiar with the company and its founder. Mr. Williams met Mr. Stubblebine at Odeo, the podcasting service that Twitter spawned and where Mr. Stubblebine was in charge of the tech. mr. Stubblebine is also the publisher of Better Humans, a self-improvement publication that is one of Medium’s most popular.
In his post, Mr. Williams said he was proud of the company’s decisions to “develop a healthier model for content that doesn’t hijack or sell people’s attention or data.” He added that he was still optimistic about Medium and noted that he would remain involved with the company as an investor.
Now that he no longer runs the day-to-day business, Mr. Williams that he also planned to write some on (where else?) Medium.
“As would be appropriate for Medium, I plan to write more about my classes when I have some time to think,” he wrote.
