The team behind my favorite, yet now defunct, service for collaborating on the written word — Editorially — is joining Vox Media to work on Product.
From the outside this seems like an excellent fit for both teams. But, also important, it will work out for those of us that loved Editorially in two key ways. One:
In addition to bringing the three of us into the fold, Vox Media is also acquiring the technology behind Editorially. We know many people have asked what we have planned for the Editorially codebase; happily, we can now report that we and the Vox Media team agree that the best thing for everyone is to share as much as we can. Together, we’re going to identify the most sensible way to release parts of the code via an open source license, so that others can learn from and build on our work.
And, happily, two:
Absolutely no user data — no names, email addresses, documents, or any other user data — will be transferred to Vox Media.
This is an important distinction. This rarely happens. However, since Vox Media is not a company that is looking to “buy users”, the Editorially team ends up being able to close this chapter of the story in a great way for customers.