Any blog or publication can instantly make any or all of its pages annotatable by copying and pasting this simple line of Javascript anywhere within their page template:
Once the code is pasted, anyone can highlight text on the page to add additional commentary. Do I need to be logged in to Genius to annotate? Yes. If you highlight text on a genius-activated page and you're not already logged in, you'll be prompted to do so. Why would I want to make my website annotatable? There are three main reasons to use Genius to make your website annotatable:
You want to annotate a primary document
Annotation is a fun and efficient way to add a layer of commentary or explanation to a primary document. Publications have been using Genius technology to annotate political speeches, event transcripts, open letters, song lyrics, legal codes, historical documents, and much else.
You want to release an annotated version of something you've written
Reporters, essayists, and bloggers have been using Genius to enhance the reader experience by adding a layer of annotation to their work. Annotating a piece of writing is like providing “DVD extras” — you can give backstory, add back cut material, explain your process, and address reactions from readers.
You want to use Genius as your commenting system
Traditional commenting systems are in a d**h spiral. As more and more readers abandon the “comments section” at the bottom of web pages in order to discuss content on Facebook and Twitter, publications are increasingly eliminating comments altogether. The result is that publishers end up creating a lot of value for Facebook and Twitter and very little for themselves. Genius gives publications a way to bring the discussion surrounding web content back onto their own pages by offering readers a superior commenting experience. By making it possible to comment on a particular line of text, Genius makes web discussions smarter and more targeted. We've found on average that readers spend three times as long on pages with annotations and nine times as long when they're making annotations. Those are levels of engagement that publications dream of and social media platforms take for granted. With Genius, publications for the first time can achieve Facebook-levels of engagement on their own pages. I thought in order to publish annotations on my site I had to first upload a document to Genius and then embed it That used to be true, but now all you need to do is copy and paste our javascript to make your page directly annotatable. It's still possible to do it the old way -- you can embed any Genius.com page on your own website – but the new way is easier and faster. I've seen Genius users on some sites identified with their full name followed by “AUTHOR” or their occupation. How do I get that? If you want users identified by their real name rather than their screen name along with additional relevant information (e.g. if they're authors or experts), send an email to user-activation@genius.com with the screen name of the user, the user's full name, however you'd like them to be ID'd, and the URL of the page you'd like them to be ID'd on. What's in it for Genius? Genius's goal is to create a more targeted, more distributed web by localizing sites of conversation on top of primary documents. In the process, we aim to cover the entire Internet with an extra layer. Our quest is lofty — not only a new kind of social media, but an infrastructural change to the way information is shared and processed online. Genius provides its technology free of charge to any website that wants to use it.