Medium Acquires Glose, A Social Ebook Platform

Online publishing platform Medium has acquired Glose, a Paris-based online ebook store that includes some robust social features. The company announced the business deal on Friday, stating that it will integrate Glose with its platform to bring more than 1.5 million ebooks — and the related Glose features — to its users.

Glose is an ebook platform with a twist — you can purchase ebooks on the platform and use the same platform to access various tools and social functions that improve the experience, including getting rewards for reading, a streak count for monitoring how many days in a row you read, and the ability to share annotations with other users.

The platform is home to books from major publishing houses, including Hachette, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. Medium, meanwhile, is a blog-like platform where anyone can create a profile and publish their own articles, including everything from long investigate pieces to small op-eds.

In its announcement, Medium indicated that the Glose platform will be integrated with its own publishing site, but it's unclear at this time what that integration will look like. Perhaps we'll see some of Glose's social and tracking features arrive on the Medium platform itself, but remains to be seen.

In a statement, Medium CEO Ev William said:

Books are a means of exploring an idea, a way to go deeper. The vast majority of the world's ideas are stored in books and journals, yet are hardly searchable nor shareable. With Glose, we want to improve that experience within Medium's large network of engaged readers and writers. We look forward to working with the Glose team on partnering with publishers to help authors reach more readers.