Even book worms need their own brand of social networking.
In an online world dominated by giants such as MySpace, Facebook and Friendster, the population that can’t help but pick up a hardcover are finding a community in Goodreads, providing a forum through which members can safely ask each other the age-old question — “read any good books lately?”
The site, whose operations are based in Santa Monica, functions in the same manner as its social-networking predecessors, allowing members to create profiles, post personal photos and add “friends.” The difference with Goodreads is it feeds off the written word, members each building a “library” of books in which they have or are currently reading, writing reviews and making recommendations to their friends accordingly.
Just less than two years old, the young Internet company recently broke the 1.3 million user mark.
Goodreads is the brainchild of Otis Chandler, the grandson of the late LA Times publisher Otis Chandler. The Stanford graduate and software engineer was never encouraged by his family to pursue journalism, but oddly enough, he wound up working in media.
“I thought I’d work on cars for a living,” the 30-year-old Chandler joked.
The site was born out of a simple curiosity to see what books friends were reading, Chandler, who was then a product manager at Tickle.com, deciding to apply his experience building Web communities.
“I was bored and wanted something I would use,” he said. “Having always been a reader … I thought (this) would be a great way to find out what my friends were reading.”
Today Goodreads is run by Chandler, his wife and cofounder Elizabeth, who serves as the chief librarian, and lead engineer Michael Economy, who left Tickle.com to join the team.
The site has a collection of about 3.8 million titles, all of which are provided through a partnership with Amazon.com. Readers have the option of adding titles and description of books previously unavailable.
The friend recommendation is the basic tenet of Goodreads, the foundation of the site based on trusting the taste of other members.
“We don’t believe in algorithm-generated recommendations,” Chandler said.
Approximately 4,000 members who have a special librarian status help facilitate the site, continually updating, adding images to books and writing descriptions, similar to the user-driven entry platform on which Wikipedia is based.
Similar to MySpace Bands, Goodreads helps aspiring authors promote their material through a special page that allows them to post their biography, a list of published books and dates of future events, including signings.
The site has essentially stayed silent in social-networking circles, thriving mainly from word of mouth rather than marketing campaigns.
It was in particular able to find an audience among book bloggers, who in the same manner as Goodreads, often wrote reviews and made recommendations to a group of friends. When the bloggers discovered Goodreads, many wrote about it and helped spread the word to book fanatics.
“We’re trying to make it as big as we can,” Chandler said. “We’re just trying to get the word out that this is a fun thing to use and to get your friends in there to help you read more.”
While he calls himself a reader, for Chandler, the site has perhaps been most effective in getting him to pick up a book more often.
“If we did a site about books and you were talking all day (about books), that would provide social pressure to read more,” he said.
Jump hedline: Site provides online community for book worms
Suggested pullquote: “If we did a site about books and you were talking all day (about books), that would provide social pressure to read more.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 12, 2008. Read the original PDF.