Berlin startup – Readmill

Posted by Mr. Startup on Dec 13, 2011 in Startup | 3 comments

2 Berlin-based Swedes launched a new startup called Readmill, which promises to create a social network for bookworms to share their reading habits, margin notes and recommendations. They feverishly building a start-up. Two months ago he moved from Stockholm to Berlin with his co-partner Henrik Berggren to catapult book reading into the Internet age.

The duo is finalizing the last pieces of Readmill, an intelligent bookmarker for digital books. In their shared office space in Berlin’s central Mitte district, also occupied by start-up Amen, a flurry of development is going on, interrupted by tech conferences, presentations for investors and the search for cooperation from E-book industry players.
The goal is to transform book reading into a social activity, bringing together readers via their e-readers, and to grab a share of the booming E-book market. Other companies have their eye on social reading as well, such as the platform LovelyBooks. But Readmill, set to go live soon, wants to take the idea even further.

Both avid readers, Berggren and Kjelkerud have an ambivalent relationship with books. There are many E-book services, but none of them are really social,” he explains. What was missing were good ideas to network books and readers with each other.
Readmill, an intelligent bookmark for e-books, is their answer. The program looks over the reader’s shoulder, keeping a protocol of their progress and showing sections that have been highlighted and commented upon by other readers. This way Readmill members create a semi-public reference list for their books, giving them the possibility of alerting friends to interesting passages for discussion.
Readmill’s software operates on three levels: as a background process for reading applications, as a web service that processes reading habits, and as a reading app for the iPad, where members can upload e-books that aren’t copyright protected.
Readmill gets interesting when as many other e-book reading programs and devices as possible feed the Readmill central server with data. By year’s end, Berggren told SPIEGEL ONLINE, the company hopes to be supporting enough reading programs so that it could, theoretically at least, be combined with 80 percent of all e-books.
It isn’t an impossible goal. Currently there aren’t that many different reading devices and programs. Publishers and reading device manufacturers will also benefit from Readmill, its creators say. “Ultimately, Readmill is about discovering books,” Kjelkerud says. With partnership negotiations with publishers underway, the possibility of Readmill adding a book purchasing function isn’t far off.

But the company isn’t just focused on e-books. To help connect old-fashioned book lovers through Readmill, they’ve also created an android app called ReadTracker, with which users can also follow their reading progress on paper.
Berggren and Kjelkerud say that it was only their move to Berlin from Stockholm in March 2011 which made the realization of their social book dream possible. It was both a challenge and an opportunity to free themselves from social obligations to enable a sole focus on their project.
Keep goin (Source Spiegel Online)