Hypothes.is

We think simple tools can help us all improve the quality of information on the Internet and in the greater world around us.

Our team is building an open platform for discussion on the web. It leverages annotation to enable sentence-level critique or note-taking on top of news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and more. Everything we build is guided by our principles. In particular that it be free, open, non-profit, neutral and lasting to name a few.

We create software, push for standards, and foster community.

We are a non-profit organization, funded through the generosity of the Knight, Mellon, Shuttleworth, Sloan and Helmsley Foundations– and through the support of hundreds of individuals like yourself that want to see this idea come to fruition. You can view our tax returns here.

Our efforts are based on the Annotator project, which we are principal contributors to, and annotation standards for digital documents being developed by the W3C Web Annotation Working Group. We are partnering broadly with developers, publishers, academic institutions, researchers, and individuals to develop a platform for the next generation of read-write Web applications. You can follow our development progress on our roadmap.

If you’d like to participate, download our extension and create an account. Please consider donating to support our effort.

Here’s a presentation at the 2013 Personal Democracy Forum that provides a little more context for our project.