TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER, READING THING
A friend introduced me to a new service called Reading. They bill themselves as: “What you’re reading. Not what you like. Not what you find interesting. Just what you’re reading.” A kind of taunting little company description, but I like that. And the minimalist Website is geared to the strictly functional — think Reddit without the ability to upvote, comment, or do anything but click links.
Reading shows a running stream of what its users are reading on the Web. If you register and drag their bookmark to your bookmark bar, you can click on it while you’re reading a page and it will immediately post that story with a link on Reading. Like Instapaper, if Instapaper only told everyone what you were looking at.
Here’s what I like: 1) it works 2) it does what it says on the lid 3) it’s a treasure trove of great links.
I read Internet articles constantly on my iPad. I’m like a vacuum cleaner shark, moving over the surface of the Internet sea floor, sucking in content, never stopping. A vacuu-shark. A site like Reading represents curation at scale. It’s a kelp bed of hamburger my vacuu-shark can plow through, potentially as vast as the Internet.
We’re releasing an eBook creation tool — and it’s going to have some other nifty, top secret features. Services like Reading are what we are watching. And using. Ecosystem of readers are being created by smart, low-expectation setting people. I already posted my first link. It was supposed to go to Michelle Houellebecq’s essay on Lovecraft, but apparently it doesn’t work for hosted PDFs yet. Instead I posted: “A Coconut Cake from Emily Dickinson: Reclusive Poet, Passionate Baker.” So, it works. Well! But! Be wary! An injudicious click could reveal you as a devotee of literary shelter blogs instead of a discerning fan of French pessimists. But I am many, I contain multitudes, etc.; and now I’ve got a lovely source of kelp-meat to keep them happily stuffed. Congrats Reading people. May you continually upset your own expectations.
Related posts:
Recent Comments