#readsocial

Envisioning ReadSocial.

ReadSocial is an API. Technically that means it's a bunch of code, running complex interactions on a server. It lives in the cloud. In the case of ReadSocial, the code tracks paragraphs and selections, comments, who makes them, who replies, etc., and serves up those conversations on whatever device that text appears. But at its core it is just lines and lines of code that the average user can't see. That can make it hard to imagine. 

For programmers that's alright. Once they get the core concept they can often begin to think about how to use it. But for the sake of discussion (and speed), we also offer a few pieces of ReadSocial for the front-end. Pieces you can see. User interfaces that you can look at and understand. They give us a basis to talk about how it might work inside your content. These code libraries also let you get up and running immediately - if you like them you can use them right out of the box. One is for web-based content. The other is for iPad apps. The clients are open-source, so you can update them with your logo. Or change the look-and-feel. You can build completely new clients from what we've given you, to make it fully customizable. Just tie them to our backend and you're good to go. You get the idea.

By Travis Alber (Founder, ReadSocial)

Commenting is broken. I don’t want to sound too harsh, realizing there are comments at the end of this article and that it’s technically possible to use them. The paradigm for commenting on the web hasn’t changed in 15 years, but how we communicate online has. We communicate in the moment. We share our thoughts. Talk about it.

But just like we’ve done for more than a decade, we talk about it somewhere else. We scroll 30 paragraphs down the article and type in a little box at the end. Or open a separate tab. Sometimes we comment on a separate social network with just a link to send people back to what we’re talking about.

Although we live in a world where we want to discuss things in the moment, it is somehow nearly impossible to discuss it in context. In a world where we have more ways to get information and more ways to share it, why don’t we have the ability to talk about it in context, where that information lives?

I can tell a ReadSocial meeting is on track when the person I’m speaking to gets a little uncomfortable and says “Well, I have to tell you, we talk a lot about adding social to our books. We’re thinking about building this.” Most people expect me to get defensive, but my reaction is usually:

That’s great! Of course you are!

If you've put much thought into it, you realize that it's more complex than just highlighting a few words. I'd imagine you're realizing you're going to have to hire the right team, commit those resources for the next 3-6 months, set up and manage the servers, create or customize a content management system, figure out what social paradigm you're going to use, design and build out the feature set, have a vision for the product roadmap, and get buy-in for a budget to handle all that long-term.

That’s why we built the ReadSocial API, because everyone is thinking about this.

All I can really say is: you can use this right now. Today. All those tasks above? We already did all that. Moreover, you still own the content and the users, we're just the straw that stirs the drink. We're ready to help you launch it today, you know? Just sayin'

Betabeat, the tech blog for the New York Observer, called us very nerdy, which, to the uninitiated, kinda translates as "cool." So we're feeling pretty good about that!

They caught our presentation at Book Expo America last week, where did a series of short demos of the paragraph-level conversations created with ReadSocial. Here's what they say:

Another one for the list:

ReadSocial