Posted by: Jack - 22 May 2009 / 11:23
When I boot up my computer in the morning I don’t start working right away. Instead, I spend 10-30 minutes 
reading online news and blogs posts. I don’t think I’m alone here; reading online has become the modern equivalent of reading the morning paper (which will be gone soon anyway).
How do you determine what to read? There’s an infinite quanity of reading material available on the internet, and everyone has a different approach to finding what’s most interesting. A few common tactics:
- Use an RSS reader, which pipes your favorite bloggers and news sources into a single place
- Go to a single news source (e.g. NY Times) and browse their new content
- Go to a social news site (e.g. Digg, Reddit) and browse content that other people have found interesting
Of these three approaches, I’m partial to using an RSS reader. I find #2 (single news source) too limiting–my favorite authors write for different blogs/publications, and I’d hate to limit myself to just one. I find #3 (social news site) too random and unreliable. Sites like Reddit certainly have interesting articles, but they are often curiosities which are not focused on my particular interests. If I relied only on Reddit, I would miss a lot of important news.
Scribnia meshes with the RSS reader approach. We believe most people’s reading habits involve reading the same authors every day. I know that when I check out the new content from the bloggers in my RSS Reader (Google Reader), there will be a lot of articles I find interesting.
We want Scribnia to be a powerful tool that will help you discover new authors worth adding to your daily reading list. We see ourselves as an alternative to other social news sites like Digg and Reddit. Our “competition” helps you read online by recommending random pieces of content, but we help you by recommending authors you can come back to every day.
