Medium buys Embedly so we can all pinch snippets of text (and maybe video)

Medium has acquired Embedly, a platform for making embedding content easier across the Web. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Embedly says it will keep its Boston office open.

From Embedly’s blog post announcing the acquisition:

Medium and Embedly both believe in the power of online publishing and making it simple for people to share their stories. We’re dedicated to the success of all publishers on the web and we want to contribute to their future. Our shared mission is making media consumption and publishing hassle-free, so publishers of any size can focus on their editorial pieces. So we’re excited to help supercharge that promise together, creating world-class in-house capabilities that will bring the very best in multimedia embedding technology to all writers and publishers on Medium.

The interesting part to all of this is Embedly’s focus on media like photographs and video. It still allows for embedded text posts and claims Reddit — a site recently made embedding posts much simpler — as a customer.

Medium has been in dire need of an embed feature for text, but this could also signal a move toward something else entirely. With other major media entities — social and otherwise — moving toward video as a (ahem) medium, perhaps Medium itself is working on hosted video that can be embedded elsewhere.