Welcome to the After-On Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Reed.

And this is a series of conversations with thinkers, founders, and scientists.

Take a little time and stretch out because these talks are unhurried and meant to bring

you to a top percentile understanding of something important.

So whether you're ready to start up or ideas, a techie or a lit major, take your time,

engage your mind, and you'll be glad you did it.

Especially this week when we'll be talking to...

Ev Williams, the founder and CEO of Medium, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter,

and the co-founder and longtime CEO of Blogger.com.

As I say at the start of our interview, Ev has founded an almost unreasonably long list

of companies.

And the three I just listed have each had huge impacts on the internet and on digital culture.

Also, a remarkably coherent theme connects these companies as well as the fourth one,

which didn't really get off the ground.

Each has brought people a global platform for spreading thoughts, opinions, and more,

ranging from the succinct and casual trips of Twitter to the long form Spartan pages of Medium.

Now, one of the internet's great early promises was the radical democratization of communication

through digital tools.

And that promise is largely been delivered on, with significant help from Ev's products.

But Ev didn't come to his life's work as an idealist with a cogent vision, but rather

as an entrepreneur testing out his umpteenth product idea.

The one that finally caught on happened to be in this realm, and it was Blogger.com,

...