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.
I've added a few screenshots of our web and iPad clients to this post. The functionality is the same for both, they just look a little different, because one is on the web and the other is, well, on the iPad. But they both do the same thing - enable conversations inside a piece of text, and move those conversations across systems, to wherever that text lives.
