Why I’m not checking out “Readness”… Yet.

Posted by Jon Mallin at 2:19 pm
Jun 172010
 

So, I was planning on writing a post about a service called “Readness.”  I read about it on TheNextWeb (“Readness: A Last.fm for News. Now why hasn’t this been done before?“). Readness is a browser extension that pays attention to what you read online and then recommends further reading. As TheNextWeb post points out, it’s Last.fm for written content. I was pretty excited to read about this and was really looking forward to checking it out… until I decided that I won’t be checking it out any time soon.

Readness like some other web apps relies on Facebook Friend Connect and for it work, you must permit it to:

  • Access my [Facebook] information
  • Post to my [Facebook] Wall
  • Access my [Facebook] data any time

I don’t write anything juicy on Facebook; in fact, I rarely contribute to Facebook. However, I don’t understand why I would authorize this Readness app to access my information, post on my wall or access my data at any time. I won’t turn this into a full blown Facebook rant (like I have in the past) but I won’t use the service until it disengages from the Facebook ecosystem or, at a minimum, allows me to use the service without handing them control over my Facebook account.

No related posts.

Jon Mallin

Founder of Tech Bottle Blog. Attorney & Amateur Blogger. B.A. University of Michigan 1997 and J.D. NYU School of Law 2000. Jon Mallin on Google+ (Preferred) -- @JonMallin on Twitter -- LinkedIN C.V. -- Email Jon@TBOTTLE.COM
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  • http://omgponi.es Peter Clark

    Jon,
    Sorry for the lack of response so far to this post. I tried writing a comment yesterday but Disqus doesn't work too great on mobile phones yet.
    We used Facebook Connect as the single service stuff does a few things that create lots of value, importing friends that already use the service, profile pic and information, all in a single click – no need to confirm emails or that nonsense.

    We hate services that randomly post to your wall or do other mischevious things, so we're really keen to not do that :)

    For what it's worth, we're working on additional registation protocols (eg twitter and our own email registartion) for the near future

    thanks for taking the time to write.

    Peter

  • http://tbottle.com/ Jon Mallin

    Peter, thanks for the comment. From TheNextWeb and other sources, Readness looks like a great service. I'll write a review of Readness when I can access it with OpenID or my Google account. Another option would be for Readness to allow users to directly register, like Disqus allows.
    Jon

  • http://omgponi.es Peter Clark

    we'll offer both eventually :)

   
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