Readability's new service

Readability’s new service

I’ve always been a huge fan of Arc90’s Readability bookmarklet, which performs an article-text parse of any web page and displays the results in a highly readable, adjustable format. (It’s like Instapaper’s text view, but nicer and applied in place, instantly, to the web page you’re viewing.)

Today, they launched an entirely new Readability service: you pay a small fee each month, and they give most of the proceeds to the authors of the pages you choose (by using the Readability bookmarklet on them, or adding them in other ways). It’s a great way for readers to support web publishers, big and small, directly and automatically.

I’m working with Readability in three main ways:

Instapaper will soon provide an option to send logs of your reading activity to your Readability account if you have one, so pages you read in Instapaper will give “credit” to the publishers.

I’ve created a special Readability edition of the Instapaper iPhone and iPad app to serve as Readability’s official mobile app, due out in the near future.

I’m an advisor to the company.

Trust me, these guys really know their stuff, and their heads are in the right place: there are no sinister motives or shady practices. It works exactly the way you’d expect, and is one of the most positive, constructive efforts I’ve seen in the online publishing world in a long time.

I’m honored to be a part of it, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

I like this idea for a few reasons:

You pay what you want. Of whatever you are willing to spend each month, writers get 70%.
You’re billed through Amazon Payments. If you already have an account with Amazon, you don’t have to give your credentials to yet another company.
You can cancel any time you want.

I’m practically married to my Instapaper account; I cherish the evenings when I can sit down and go through my Instapaper cue one by one.
The ability to easily reward the authors whose work I enjoy so much, is something I’ve been waiting for a long time.

I hope this catches-on quickly.

marco