Blogging platform provider Medium (A Medium Corporation) has acquired Embed.ly, Inc., a company that as its name may suggest offers a service that makes it easy for publishers to embed third party content, for an undisclosed sum.

Founded in 2010, Embed.ly offers a platform and suite of tools to make embedding and previewing links simple; the service assists publishers and consumers manage embed codes from more than 100 websites and API’s including YouTube, Flickr, Ustream, Picassa, Hulu, Twitpic, and Quantcast.

While many of those embeds aren’t rocket science to implement alone, Embed.ly automatically converts URL links from those sources into embedded media without the need to dig into the specific site to find the original embed code.

In addition to facilitating quick and easy embeds, the service also provides additional tools including analytics that allows users to make data-driven decisions on their audio and video embed; recommendations for future embeds based on those results, and a promotion tool that is said to drive traffic to specific media by highlighting it as a recommendation.

Customers using the platform include The New York Times, The Guardian, Boing Boing, Livefyre, Inc., Aol, Inc., Storify, Inc., and perhaps not surprisingly Medium itself.

“Medium and Embedly both believe in the power of online publishing and making it simple for people to share their stories,” the Embed.ly Team wrote in a blog post on Medium. “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 post noted that the service will continue as a distinct product and services will be uninterrupted.

Busy time

The acquisition comes at a busy time for Medium following its $50 million Series C round in April that has included the acquisition of Superfeedr (Notifixious, Inc.) in June for an undisclosed sum.

There’s no question that Embed.ly brings to the table a highly complimentary product for Medium but perhaps, more importantly, a revenue stream as well; while Embed.ly’s base service is free to use there are various options for power users as well and decent money at that.

Prior to acquisition Embed.ly had raised at least $1.02 million (one round was not disclosed) from investors including Adam Schwartz, Betaworks, Andy Weissman, John Borthwick, Chris Sacca, Howard Lindzon, Lowercase Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Social Leverage, SV Angel, Venture51, and Y Combinator.

Image credit: Embed.ly