Social Reader

Social Reader is a Social Reading application, mainly used to populate content and data on social networking platforms like Facebook. The application is getting widely famous among newspapers, content publishing networks and blogging portals. Social Reader allows the users to read, share, like and comment on news, press releases, social updates, technology, information and entertainment content without leaving their social networking portals. Facebook is currently the only platform serving reading applications, but other social media networks like Twitter and Digg are also moving in.

The brief information about some famous social readers is cited here.

List of popular Social Readers

Washington Post Reader

Washington Post might be considered as the pioneer of social reading applications. The newspaper had a huge fan following on social networks, especially Facebook but their social engagement was too low as compared to the number of connections they had. People did liked their Facebook Fan Page but didn’t actually felt the need of going back to it again and again, as they were reading the newspaper on already existing web portals of the company. Engaging the young audience was another issue. Most of the young audience is more interested in getting social updates about the happenings rather than going to a epaper and reading news.

As a result, the newspaper launched Washington Post Social Reader for Facebook on 2010/07/08.^[1] The application did take a slow start but once it was viral, it actually spread like one. There are currently 17.4 Million monthly active users and with more than 6 million of them coming in last three months. The application is now also available for smartphone platforms like iPhone, iPod touch, Android and Kindle Fire.^[1] This reader is powered by WaPo Labs, the official Washington Post technology labs.

Guardian Social Reader

Guardian was the next major news publishing portal that joined the race. Guardian Social Reader was announced on Friday 23 September 2011.^[2] As the ground was already set by Washington Post social reader, it took Guardian a very small time to reach its audience on Facebook. Within the 6 months of the launch of application, the monthly active users for Guardian Social Reader have reached an amazing figure of 5.9 Million, with more than 2.9 Million joining in in the first two months of 2012. Guardian has also launched the same reader application for smartphones including Android, iPhone and iPad. The Guardian Social Reader for Smartphones is available at Google Currents.

Other

Some other notable ‘’Social Reader Applications’’ and some providers are listed below. (need expansion)

References

^ ^a ^b "The Washington Post Social Reader". Washington Post. Retrieved August 07,2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) Cite error: The named reference "“Washington" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ "Guardian Social Reader". Guardian. Retrieved September 23,2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

External links

Azeemi92 (talk)

[“Washington-1] "The Washington Post Social Reader". Washington Post. Retrieved August 07,2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) Cite error: The named reference "“Washington" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).

[“Guardian”-2] "Guardian Social Reader". Guardian. Retrieved September 23,2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

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