Saturday 26 April 2014

Goodreads: What to read next?

What is Goodreads.com?

This is a very interesting webpage, that is certainly worth your attention. It is neccessary to note, that it is not a social network, nor a book store. The official category it falls into is called "social cataloguing" site. You probably know the Internet Movie Database. So you can consider this to be the IMDb's friend, who is interested more in books, than in movies.
Goodreads.com was launched in January 2007 and by now, their user base has grown up to 20 million users. Because of its great functionality and popularity, it was acquired by Amazon in 2013, which directly incorporated this webpage into their new Kindle Paperwhite model.

source: amazon.com

How does it work?

It is very simple. You register and create your own profile. Goodreads asks you about the books you have already read. After you finish your own personal list of books that you already read, the webpage recommends some other stories you are likely to enjoy. This is based on the similarity of the books or on the other people, who read similar novels than you. This can be very useful. You can discover many interesting books that you enjoy and you therefore no longer need to search the bookshop and read every book's description to find something interesting to read next.

Rating system

You are asked to review every book that you've read. It is not obligatory, but user feedback helps to find out, how the general public views every book. 5 star rating can help you recognise the quality of the book and what you can expect from it. Reading the comments can be sometimes helpful, but sometimes absolutely useless, because a lot of negative feedback is based on the subjective opinion of the reader, which doesn't have to correspond with your own. 

Updating your status

This webpage has some of the features that are similar to the ones of social networks. You can update your progress, even the webpage you are on. You can add friends, who can then see which books you read, which you are planning to read , and which you are currently reading. This is particularly useful, because if you find out, that some of your friends is reading a book you were planing to read, you can read their review and ask them about their opinion.

The social media were always used in order to connect people. Goodreads does just that. Connects you with your friends - through books. Maybe next time it will motivate you to engage in conversation with someone about your favourite book.


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