Get credit? Credit for what? Forgive me, I don't mean to be harsh, but is the only purpose to obtain bragging rights over which articles you've read on the Internet? I'm struggling to find a reason why I'd want to use this.
I kinda see what they're trying to do. In theory, if a person reads a bunch of articles on a topic, over time they should become an "expert" on that topic.
It seems they're pushing it a little far, to be honest. I'd say "expertise" is way too strong of a word for arbitrary knowledge gained by reading news on the internet. At the very least there should be some kind of testing component. I can click through every link on HN, but that doesn't mean I've learned, or even read, anything.
On the other hand, reading through their blog, perhaps the whole thing is a clever troll poking fun of the triviality of most "startups."
Expertise is definitely too strong of a word, especially for where we are at right now... we need to refine our copy.
Our goal is to eventually build in some testing mechanisms but right now we are primarily focused on testing out our tagging accuracy. We will probably roll out some form of time-on-site metric soon that will modify the tag's relevancy score to determine how much credit you should actually earn. In addition we've played around with some word-relationship stuff and it actually wouldn't be that hard for us to roll out some form of auto-generated quizzes. Again, a lot of this is very new and we are open to any feedback...
Yeah, this is absolute nonsense. It's gamification for your procrastination, as if your procrastination was not intrinsically motivating enough, here's some pointless extrinsic motivation (Google News badges did the same thing, were equally pointless, and have been discarded).
Since recruters ask for Git profile (what you do), Stackoverflow profile (what you ask), Linkit profile (who you know), why not include one profile on what you read (what interest you)?
If you show that you mainly follows the articles on Node.js for two years, it will make believable that you are indeed interrested in this techno.
That is our goal. This is definitely a very early look, but we also hope to provide you great content about Node.js from other top readers, which hopefully can help you discover useful content.
Or if you are new to a topic (like Node.js), you can find the articles that subject matter experts have read, and have at minimum a crash course "lesson plan".
No worries, and definitely a good question. What we have now is largely a proof-of-concept as to how accurately we can tag articles. The thought is that it could be cool to keep track of everything you read and see insights into your knowledge progression, in a way it's like a scrobbler for your news intake. It's still very early on though and we definitely have to figure out a solid way to answer the question "why do I care about credit?"
I suppose it's also a way for users to remember the gist of an article that they've read a long time ago? But honestly aside from that it does look like a Foursquare for reading articles...
