Library Stuff

“For a long time we’ve wanted to expand our editorial products at Goodreads. Our general newsletter is great, but one of the coolest things we learned as we created the site was how readers around the world bond over a shared love of a particular genre, be it literature from 1900 to WWII, steampunk, or books about sailing. Knowing that, we wanted to provide a newsletter tailored to your passions. Today, I’m pleased to announce that we are launching our first genre-themed newsletter, with the plan to create many more in the future. We started with a voracious group on Goodreads: our YA readers. And we hope you’ll be satisfied!” (via Goodreads)

“Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Goodreads, a leading site for readers and book recommendations that helps people find and share books they love. “Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading,” said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon Vice President, Kindle Content. “Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike.”(via Amazon)

“I’ve got exciting news to announce today: Goodreads now has 10 million members! To put this in perspective, it took four and a half years to reach 5 million members and only another 15 months to double that number. Today, six books are added on Goodreads per second. We’ve come a long way since Elizabeth and I built Goodreads from our living room, motivated by the belief that there was a better way to discover and discuss good books—and that we could build it.

via GoodReads.

“This evening, Facebook is launching its new App Center to help its 901 million members discover high quality social apps for the web and mobile. Goodreads is one of the apps participating in the launch event, and the new App Center will serve as another way for people to discover our app.

What makes the Goodreads team particularly proud is that the Facebook App Center only lists high quality apps that rate well on key signals such as highest customer ratings and frequency of user shares. The Goodreads App, with an average 4.5 star rating (out of 5) is clearly winning many fans.”

via Goodreads

Goodreads Blog – “Goodreads continues to grow at a phenomenal pace. Today, we had our 300 millionth book cataloged! To give this statistic some context: It took the Goodreads community three years to catalog 100 million books (including books marked as read, to-read, or currently reading). Fourteen months later, in late September 2011, we reached 200 million books. Now, just seven months after that, we’ve hit the 300 million benchmark. Take a look at how the number of books cataloged has skyrocketed.”

Press Release – ”
NoveList, a division of EBSCO Publishing, will begin incorporating reader ratings and book reviews from Goodreads into NoveList products thanks to a new agreement between the companies. The agreement leverages the content of Goodreads, the largest social network for readers, adding additional content to the most popular readers’ advisory service available. The added information will help librarians answer one of the most frequently asked questions—what do I read next?”

NYT – “Netflix uses a software algorithm to recommend movies and Zappos uses one to recommend shoes. Now Goodreads, the social network for book lovers, is introducing an algorithm to recommend books. Goodreads was started in 2006 for people who wanted to talk about books online. Its 4.6 million members load their virtual bookshelves with books they’ve read, are reading and want to read, rate and review them, and discuss them with friends and others on the site.”

“On Thursday, Goodreads will announce that it has acquired another start-up, Discovereads.com. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze which books people might like, based on books they’ve liked in the past and books that people with similar tastes have liked.”