Transcript of a conversation with Ev Williams about his product development philosophy. Williams emphasizes iterative discovery over long-term roadmaps: products are learned and refined from real user behavior ("usage is oxygen for ideas"). He gives historical examples: Twitter's 2009 shift from 'status updates' to an information network (leading to search, trends, retweet design) and early Medium design changes (removing full-page images to avoid becoming a photo-sharing site). The account is reflective and process-focused rather than prescriptive.
And so how much of what Medium is do you already know and how much did you know when you started? Because having known you now through two companies and you know, sort of both being involved in blogging, you feel very intuitive in how you build products. But I don't think that you build a five year plan and a roadmap. Am I correct?
You're correct, yeah.
So on this Medium journey, you know, how you've explained it to me today here on stage is a lot more than when we first talked about it.
It'll be different in six months. I'm sure the long term vision won't change or what we're going for I don't think will change. But how I describe it will change. And what I think the really important elements are will change. And I think this is the way I develop products and you discover them over time. Even going back to that Twitter story and the really key, huge insight we had around 2009 I think is when we remember when we changed the question from what are you doing? What's happening? We were. That was after we realized, you know what? Twitter isn't about status updates to my friends, it's more about it's an information network, not a social network. It's also a social network to a degree and that's what a lot of people use it for. But what we really wanted to emphasize was this real time information. And that came after a couple years in and then we started tweaking the product in that direction. We added search, we put more emphasis on trends. We, the way we designed, Retweet, all were about maximizing the efficient flow of whatever information is important to you. Very different than if we would have maximized making interpersonal connections. And so that is so with Medium already in the last six months, we've changed how we approach the idea of what publishing is. At first, if people check out Medium right away we had these big images, full page images. We got rid of those because we realized if we launched with that, we'd just be a photo sharing site. But these things evolve slowly for me. And like Matt Mullenwig said, usage for your product is like oxygen for ideas, to paraphrase him. But I believe that's true. And it's not that I look at what people do or I do look at what people do with the product and getting it out early. But it's not about data analysis or listening to feedback and saying it should do this. It's just you realize in real time as they're doing, you're like, oh, that thing's not important. This thing over here is important. And then you nudge it that direction. And then in retrospect, you look back and like, oh, yeah, brilliant plan. We were doing that all along.
