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John (bird whisperer) to John's feed, The Reading Room
Goodreads.com Is Growing as a Popular Book Site - NYTimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/2013...
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"Goodreads and smaller similar sites are addressing what publishers call the “discoverability” problem: How do you guide consumers to books they might want to read? The digital age has created online retail sites that are overflowing with new books, leaving readers awash in unknown titles. At the same time the number of bookstores has shrunk considerably, depriving customers of the ability to browse or ask staff members for guidance. For a long time Amazon, the largest online bookseller, dominated the digital discovery zone through its book reviews, recommendations and displays on its home page. But Amazon has lost some trust among readers recently amid concerns that its reviews and recommendations can contain hidden agendas. The theory behind Goodreads and its two main — albeit much smaller — competitors, Shelfari and LibraryThing, is that people will put more faith in book recommendations from a social network they build themselves. Amazon was convinced enough by the concept that it bought Shelfari in 2008. It also owns a portion of LibraryThing as a result of purchasing companies that already owned a stake in the site. Goodreads members represent a small portion of all book buyers, and it is not immune from some of the politicking that goes on elsewhere — authors are not prevented from reviewing their own books, for instance. But advocates consider this acceptable because readers can choose their own reviewers. “Because Goodreads is not a publisher or retailer, people feel that the information is not getting manipulated,” said Amanda Close, who runs digital marketplace development for Random House. “People trust them because they are so crowd-sourced and their members are fanatics. You can’t buy a five-star review there.”" - John (bird whisperer)
So many sites & services want to go social but I still find the best recommendations from everyone instead of from my small group of friends. Want to buy a camera? I read reviews from the whole web, not only a handful of photographer friends. Want to buy a car? I read reviews from the whole web, not only a handful of car enthusiast friends. - Amit Patel
Yes, you might *trust* your friends more than you trust everyone, but that's a trust issue you have to work out with your therapist. I find the recommendations from the whole world to be better. And that's why I like FriendFeed and Twitter. Because I get to read stuff from strangers, not only my friends. My Facebook feed, full of things from my friends, is mundane compared to my FriendFeed feed, full of things from strangers. - Amit Patel
I don't think "friend" used in an internet context is restricted to people you know in real life. That's certainly not true for my Goodreads "friends" (who are almost all people that I haven't met). There are certain things, like cars or computers, where it helps to have expert reviews, but with things like books it makes sense to find new stuff to read via people with compatible tastes. - John (bird whisperer)
So Friend as in FriendFeed. Got it. :) It seems like a lot of work to curate these friend lists separately for each service, so I haven't bothered. Oh well. I just want to directly go from “books I like” to the service telling me “books I might like”, without me having to manually curate a “friends” list. I'm too lazy :) - Amit Patel
Related: in advertising, I want to go directly from “I'm interested in small luxury cars” to seeing ads for small luxury cars, instead of going indirectly through “oh you fit into the male asian american 35-45 demographic” which leads to all sorts of things I don't really care about. The intermediate step often leads to a worse signal. If you like three types of books and I only am interested in one type, then following *you* is going to be worse than expressing my interest for a *type of book*. That's my gut feel anyway. - Amit Patel
In my experience, service-generated recommendations tend to be mostly irrelevant because they rely too much on bestseller lists or other stuff the industry wants to promote. Sometimes they're even inappropriate (like when I get ads for bird-killing products). Even on Goodreads, the service-generated recommendations rarely result in something I'm actually interested in. But browsing others' reading lists has led to some interesting reads. - John (bird whisperer)
I've really enjoyed the recommendations and reviews I see from friends on Goodreads (both people I know in person, and people I know only online.) The advertising is also a degree more accurate to my interests than most sites (ie: authors I actually read, rather than random baby or cleaning products.) Of course, the social aspect is just one part of what makes it useful - I love being able to see what I've read over the course of time, and in what order. I read enough that it is easy to lose track. - Jennifer Dittrich
Keeping track of my own readings is why I originally joined. I also like the yearly reading challenges (even though I failed miserably last year). - John (bird whisperer)
I've gotten several new friend requests lately from people I wouldn't expect to know of it. I'm glad it's growing. :) - Mrs. Alix May
What Jennifer said. I did get a friend request from a horror writer and I was a bit befuddled, at first, but then I saw that we are both in a group for Classic Horror and in one of the group forums I had talked about my love of some of the authors listed in his favorites. I haven't accepted the request yet, but I might. - Katy S
I luh GoodReads. - Jenny H.
I like it for keeping track, and the social part is okay except people, including me, aren't very chatty on it. I've gotten a lot of recommendations from people's lists & reviews without saying anything to them, almost feels like lurking. - Starmama
I joined initially to keep track of my books. But now my favorite part is to see what my friends are reading. There are two or three people who enjoy almost the same type of fiction as I do, so if I see they like a contemporary novel, I'll keep that in mind. - Lis
I agree with John regarding the value of humans in the loop of recommendations/reading ideas. You can get machine created recommendations on Goodreads, though, and you can create 'shelves' to base the recommendations on which will probably make the recommendations more relevant. (I also joined for bookkeeping(?) reasons :)) - Eivind
*bump* - John (bird whisperer)