I was looking at the recent book Catching Fire on both LT and GoodReads. It's the #3 "Popular This Month" book on LT, and has 1,101 copies. I can't find the absolute number on GR, but there are 9,385 ratings and 3,747 reviews (there are about 400 ratings and 93 reviews on LT). So it seems like there are vastly more people using GR. Why is this, and is it something to be concerned about?

Disclaimer: I don't know much of anything about GoodReads, so I'm just speculating.

I don't think the value of "free* vs modest fee" in making someone's decision can be overestimated. (*with ads)

Goodreads also appears to be aimed at a younger, more social-network-oriented, internet-conscious demographic. I base this on the feel of the site and on looking at the "About Goodreads" page and finding sentences like these: Let's make reading fun again. Somehow, reading books seems to have gotten a bad rap. People are working too hard and not making time to read, people are watching TV because they can veg out and turn their brains off—hey, we feel it too! (Frankly, that paragraph alone would've driven me screaming to LT. ;) The emphasis on "friends" on that page also calls to mind that younger, "Facebook" demographic.

Maybe they just haven't updated the stats in a while, but their "About Goodreads" page says that they have over 61,000,000 books catalogued. That's not so far off of our 44+ million. Compared to your example, where the number of copies is 9x greater, it makes me wonder whether there aren't more of the average "trend reader" there--that is, readers who are apt to read mostly the latest, popular books. Their overall catalog, then, may be less diverse than LT's.

Any concern that needs to be felt in this situation, I leave to Tim.

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 10:22am.

Thanks, lots of good points to think about there.

I wonder whether the GR tend toward popular books is partly due just to the fact that it focuses on reading rather than owning. I'm not sure that LT reading tastes are vastly different; I see plenty of discussion here about the books that are currently popular. But on LT, people also list books they own or have read in the past, so the currently-popular books aren't as prominent. So I think the mean GR catalogue is much smaller because people are mostly concerned with the books they're reading now, but I also think their overall number of users is much higher.

I'm interested in the "Facebook demographic" issue, because Facebook has managed to branch out and become the social networking site of choice for older adults, too. My mother and aunts use Facebook all the time. So this is where it seems worrying for LT: a site that initially became immensely popular among a certain demographic eventually became immensely popular in general, so that there's not really room for other similar sites. Wasn't it just yesterday that MySpace admitted it could no longer try to compete?

I guess it is because LT looks more difficult to use for people. Goodreads also looks a bit more sleeker. Goodreads misses a lot of functions LT has. But there is one I love really: Goodreads got their Groups-section right. I would really like this system on LT: it looks cleaner, no chaos and noise and the groups are sorted into categories!

I don't think LT should worry: they only need to pay attention to lay-out and usability. Fix the bugs that are still open and work out the features we currently have a bit more (reviews, connections,...). LT is quite interactive, but parts here and there. It would be great if all those interactive things were connected together a bit more, working together more. I mean, now that we have the currently reading collection: make an easy way to show the covers on our profiles. That sort of things. Do more with your data. I think this would lead to more reviewing and discussions, or more interaction in general.

We have the BETA-group, work together with those users to squash bugs and to get to know how the features can be developed more. Discus section for section in that group.Make a real project for it. That way LT will get better. Right now, it looks like Microsoft, while the content is Apple. Tune look and behaviour so that it will also look as Apple.

I belong to GR & visit several groups. Each group lists its number of members, but the active members, those who post is quite small. Every now & then an interesting subject will break & there might be 20 or more posts on that subject, but then the interest slows down & it's back to the same old 3 or 4 regulars.
What is most interesting to me, are the book discussion groups. these can draw 20 to 3o people who comment (tho not daily) These "regulars" are not young people. There are many groups that attract the younger crowd, & those that do enter the "Mature readers" groups, soon back out.
I belong to the "Spongebob Squarepants group" I don't post, but I like to read what the kids have to say. (& yes, I'm a fan, all that baby-sitting can get to you)
so while GR has more members, the groups & threads on LT are far more active & there is a MUCH larger number of members who post regulary, review books, ect.

the groups & threads on LT are far more active & there is a MUCH larger number of members who post regulary, review books, ect.

I don't know about group activity, but GR surely has more people reviewing books. Catching Fire only came out last month and already has 3,747 reviews on GR, while on LT even Twilight has only 1,256 reviews.

I've been watching the stats for a while between Goodreads and LibraryThing. They seem to trend the same but LT has fewer members. Perhaps it's because of the fees, but that's not it entirely. I ask others why they join Goodreads instead of LibraryThing. Most of what I've heard is that their real-time friends or colleagues belong to GR.

The demographics are somewhat different between LT and GR with LT shifting toward the more highly educated. That was one characteristic that made me more interested in LT in the beginning - the often higher level of conversation here on the fora.

I'm sure Tim watches the stats as well and tries to develop his own site in a way that bucks popular trends, but tries to provide a complete, useful, and fun web site for interested readers. We may never catch up to or surpass GR, but then, since we are so different, perhaps we won't have to. We are developing in different directions than GR is.

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 11:27pm.

--> 4

Right now, it looks like Microsoft, while the content is Apple.

LOL!

I've tried to pimp LT on the Malazan (fantasy series) boards where I hang out; often there'll be a thread wondering where to catalogue your books online, or asking who's on what book site. Almost everyone seems to use GoodReads, and the driving factors almost exclusively seem to be cost (200 books for free versus theoretically-infinite books for free) and ease of use--I've actually seen comments along the lines of "I've got an LT account, but I don't update my library there much because it's so confusing to use."

Throw in stuff like a working Facebook app (ahem) and it's actually pretty easy to see why people who perhaps don't care about library-quality data and edition customizability (does anyone besides LT let you upload your own covers?) would choose GR over LT.

Because LT appeals to a different demographic, and its basic function is different.

LT was set up as a site for cataloguing your books. It does that brilliantly. GoodReads doesn't.

> 9

I've actually seen comments along the lines of "I've got an LT account, but I don't update my library there much because it's so confusing to use."'

You know, I've never understood that. I find LT incredibly easy to use. My problem with sites like GR is that it's very hard to retrieve accurate data when listing a book. But perhaps GR users don't care about accuracy. I do.

"I guess it is because LT looks more difficult to use for people. Goodreads also looks a bit more sleeker."

Agree with this. I think LT offers much more, but it does that at a cost: it is more complicated. It's more complicated visually and it's more complicated in terms of the site structure. I think some cleaner visual design and more places to help people learn what different parts of the site are and how they work together would help. Those of us who've been here for a while have grown up with the increasing features, so to speak. But many things are not always intuitive for new users, as posts in FAQ, mistakes in CK or elsewhere, etc. show. If there was a way to make the front-end interface clearer and simpler, with a bit more guidance that new users could use, and ways built in to let people gradually explore more of the site (with more guidance on doing that)...
People once suggested a tips module for the homepage: that might be a start. Maybe too, a simpler personal homepage at the beginning (with fewer modules), but with prominent links about what other modules and features are available?

11> That's exactly it. When all you care about is saying "I've read this book" and reviewing, rating, and talking about it as easily and quickly as possible... well, there's a right tool for every job, and LT's honestly not the best tool for that job.

>7 I like your optimistic outlook, and I hope you're right. I have my doubts about some points, though, like the fact that LT is developing in different directions. Years were spent on Collections to produce basically the same shelf function that GR had all along.

it's actually pretty easy to see why people... would choose GR over LT.

But if it's so easy, why not just do something about it? Search box on the main page, adding generic books from the work pages, a bit more FB integration and the option to have more than 200 books with ads....

You know, I've never understood that. I find LT incredibly easy to use.

I think LT is easy to use only after a certain point. Once you have books in your catalogue, it's easy to work with them. Getting them into your catalogue initially isn't nearly as easy. Plus, I'm not sure that the default catalogue views are a very good representation of what you can do on LT--I seem to remember that they were all pretty much the same, rather than highlighting the different options available.

My BIL invited me to join GR. I disliked their groups. I also wasn't fond of how you pick the edition when adding a book to your shelf. Maybe because I was exposed to LT first, I don't know. I did enjoy their trivia game but overall, I like it better here.

13: I don't see why it couldn't be, though. LT is a great site for cataloging, but that's no reason why it can't also be good and easy to use for people who primarily want to use it for reviewing and rating what they read. LT doesn't have to do only one thing well: it can do several.

Getting them into your catalogue initially isn't nearly as easy.

Sure it is! (Other than the time spent entering a couple of thousand books, but that would be the same on any site.) On GoodReads, it's rare for me to find my edition of any book that's not very recent. On LT, it's easy as pie, thanks to the multiplicity of databases available for searching.

14>

Getting {books} into your catalogue initially isn't nearly as easy.

For people who don't care about editions or data quality (since people who do wouldn't consider using GoodReads anyway), it's as simple as entering title+author on the very prominent and clearly named "Add Books" page, and clicking on the result. How much easier can it get without sending gnomes to your house to do it for you?

But if it's so easy, why not just do something about it? Search box on the main page, adding generic books from the work pages, a bit more FB integration and the option to have more than 200 books with ads....

So, lose what makes LT distinct? No, thank you. Look, LT is different from GoodReads. Losing that individuality is a terrible idea.

I hate to say, but I think the lack of FB integration is really hurting LT's publicity. I am not even on FB, but lots and lots of people are and that would be a great way to spread the word about LT. I think GR has slightly better publicity and PR.

Oh, and the fact that the invite friends feature here is broken, last I heard, also doesn't help for those who do want to use LT like they would use GR.

I looked at GoodReads but didn't like what I saw. It seemed to me to be a push button, image driven site. I think in words and actually found the layout and options there limiting.

I understand that some people like that but there is room for diversity. I like THIS site; I like the way it is evolving and changing,; adapting to people's needs but not becoming the same homogenised look that I see elsewhere on the web.

Making LT more like GR because some people prefer that would drive away the people who like LT because it is not GR. (and possibly mean that the LT lovers had no where to go).

I'm not so sure about what it means in terms of demographics, but based on my experience with both sites I would agree that they have different basic functions. LibraryThing has more of an emphasis on books and cataloging while GoodReads is more about reading (there is less distinction between what you own and what you've read). I use LibraryThing to manage my personal collection of books, and GoodReads to track my reading (and to some extent socialize with my friends, more of whom are on GoodReads).
GoodReads is easier to use in a lot of ways, there are fewer hoops to jump through to add a book, the site has a slicker layout, and it is perhaps better integrated into the internets at large - if you follow an author you get updates from their off-site blogs. I also like that when I add a book it prompts me to also include the date I read it.
But LibraryThing is a lot better at the function which is most important to me -finding recommendations tailored to my personal tastes.
I think it's interesting that while GoodReads seems to function better as a social networking site, LibraryThing is more democratic in its workings. On GoodReads, books can only be added or edited by people who have applied to be "librarians."

it's as simple as entering title+author on the very prominent and clearly named "Add Books" page

Yes, but why should you have to go to a separate page?

So, lose what makes LT distinct? No, thank you. Look, LT is different from GoodReads. Losing that individuality is a terrible idea.

This makes no sense. GoodReads has groups; should LT not have groups just to be different? Should LT not show cover pictures just to be different? Are the facts that you need to pay money to catalogue a decent number of books and go to a separate page to find and add books really the defining characteristics of LT?

Pretty Pictures (i.e. it's flashier)

Also, it's more "fun" - trivia games, graphics-heavy, etc.

And a working Facebook application.

ETA: Close bold

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 1:01pm.

LT is a great site for cataloging, but that's no reason why it can't also be good and easy to use for people who primarily want to use it for reviewing and rating what they read. LT doesn't have to do only one thing well: it can do several.

I think this is an important point.

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 12:56pm.

--> 14

Years were spent on Collections to produce basically the same shelf function that GR had all along.

I think originally, Tim grumbled about having to do the Collections feature and then caved to LT members, but now sees how good it has been in attracting new members. I'm not sure he was originally willing to spend the time for that. Regarding different directions, I am referring to using library data and integrating both with libraries and indie bookstores. His source material is so vast. It's not just Amazon. Conversely, LT has some great data and stats to share (for a price!) that GR does not have.

To a new user, LT is not as easy as it seems to those of us more seasoned. We have had time to get used to all of its features over time. Perhaps we need to fool new users into thinking it's easy when they first encounter LT... :)

--> 12

A simpler interface for beginners would be good. I like the idea of a simpler home page which could be expanded.

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 1:00pm.

Conversely, LT has some great data and stats to share (for a price!) that GR does not have.

Except that LT could easily lose out here in the long run if GR has much more data coming in (as is certainly the case for reviews). Maybe GR hasn't thought to sell that data yet, but that doesn't mean it will never happen.

They have too many reviews! :) Also, think about the quality of the reviews. Some of ours are stunning; not to say theirs are not good.

I think that LT has much more worthwhile data (see Zeitgeist, Common Knowledge, Local, etc.) than just book reviews alone.

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 6:29pm.

I just checked out GR for the first time ever.

If I'd been able to look at GoodReads and LT on the same day and make a decision about what site to use, I'd still have chosen LT based on it's cataloging feature. That's the main draw for me. Reviews, ratings, and talk are cool, but keeping track of my library is of paramount importance to me.

So when I just looked at GR and saw the following, it didn't do a thing for me:

Have you ever wanted a better way to:
•Get great book recommendations from people you know.
•Keep track of what you've read and what you'd like to read.
•Form a book club, answer book trivia, collect your favorite quotes.

Answer to first bullet: No.
Answer to second bullet: 75 book challenge keeps great track
Answer to third bullet: not interested, not interested, not interested.

Nothing about cataloging. End of discussion.

GR and LT seem to appeal to different demographics.

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 1:15pm.

25>

A simpler interface for beginners would be good. I like the idea of a simpler home page which could be expanded.

That's been suggested before (or at least, similar "have a slimmed-down interface for newbies" suggestions have been made, I don't recall whether they were homepage-specific), and I've always thought it was a terrible idea. Some of us like feature-rich sites and aren't actually afraid of words, and LT is the only place for us now. I'd hate to see that demographic turned away and have nowhere to go because LT decided it would rather compete for the same demographic that Goodreads and Shelfari want instead.

(And no, it doesn't *have* to be 'instead'. But "hide all those scary scary features" definitely leans that direction.)

I just checked out GR for the first time too.

Am I right: they only use Amazon as a source? Everything else has to be input manually?
Well, if so, that's it then for VERY many non-native-English-speaking people... There's no Finnish Amazon -- however, LT has TWO largest Finnish library sources available and I've found 90% of my Finnish-language items there.
So GR would never ever have worked for me...

Also, even though internet-wise I'm almost ancient (turning 40 in a few days), I've never been afraid of complex looking sites and LT held no terrors for me even though GR does look neater.

>28 Have you ever wanted a better way to:
•Get great book recommendations from people you know.
•Keep track of what you've read and what you'd like to read.
•Form a book club, answer book trivia, collect your favorite quotes.

Answer to first bullet: No.
Answer to second bullet: 75 book challenge keeps great track
Answer to third bullet: not interested, not interested, not interested.
Agreeing with you 100 per cent.
I'm not at all interested in any reviews, book clubs, trivia games (oh dear god...) or even book discussion -- only cataloguing. That's what brought me here.

Don't change this into GR -- just make this even better-working LT!

For example, fix that "invite friends" -thing!!!!!!!!

As someone who is a member of both but uses GR far more than LT, I'd like to weigh in. Keep in mind this is only my opinion.

I found the entry of books into my personal catalog/collection/whatever to be equally easy on both sites. However, LT was much more focused on book ownership and personal libraries (at the time, anyway - this was at least a year pre-collections). My personal library is always in flux: I almost never reread a book, which means about 99% of the books I read are given away (usually via BookCrossing) once I've read them. The books I do keep are relatively few in number, and cataloging them isn't really a priority for me. Sure, GR doesn't have a lot of the nifty features that LT does, but all I need in an online book site is an easily-searchable place to post my reviews.

My dear friend SqueakyChu has been trying to get me back to LT now that they have the collections function working, but at this point it feels like far too much work. I have over 350 books reviewed on my GR account (of which maybe 10 are still in my possession). If I wanted to bring them over here, I'd have to pay money, not to mention all the time it would take to copy-paste each of my reviews individually. It just doesn't seem worth it.

--melydia

Just chiming in to say I much prefer the functionality, organization and navigation of LT over GoodReads. To get any useful recommendations or data out of GR, I have to friend people with similar tastes (who don't seem to exist over there, or I feel too awkward asking people to be my friend that I think I might have any reading tastes in common). I get much better and discreet results without having to become a social animal here. I also hate the visual busyness of GR. ... If I'm interested in a particular topic, I can find it much faster here, and the discussions are much more substantial (less superficial than GR). Also, I'm just not that into building a network, and so many people over there obviously are. Finally, I am not a Facebook user, so compatibility with it isn't important to me.

So, in short, I think the two sites attract users with different priorities. There's overlap, of course, but LT is definitely my tool of choice.

--> 31

Here the deal, melydia...

Post your books to LT, and I'll pay for your lifetime membership. No kidding!!

Can't you import your books here? Someone help me with this as I've never used the import feature.

Another thought. Start by posting the 10 books that are still in your possession. Did you know that when you post a book here to LT, it connects directly to its BookCrossing page via the BCID number you enter on the details page? That was what sold me on LT originally (being a longtime BookCrosser myself). I thought that was cool.

Oh, well. Your decision... :)

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 1:52pm.

I'm another person who is satisfied user of both sites. They have very different functionality. LT is for what I own and GR is for what I read, and those are two pretty different groups for me. GR is also what I use for TBR since I have no interest in adding anything I don't own to LT. I don't use either site to get new ideas of what to read (I read book reviews for a living) so I can't speak to which site is better for that. But I do find GR's high population of reviews useful for deciding whether to read something. Overall, I really don't think of the sites as competitors -- especially based on the future intentions of each site -- and thus don't see anything to be concerned about.

34> (I read book reviews for a living)

Can I have your job?

I had never heard of GR so have spent a goodly bit of time this morning looking at it. "Different strokes for different folks" comes to mind. LibraryThing works for me: my books are happy here, and I find many of the discussions worthwhile. I am delighted with the level of thinking some members exhibit, and charmed by the relationships that grow organically. The few times I've had difficulties they were quickly resolved by staff. Above all: no commercial ads!!! Viva LibraryThing ~~~ THRIVE!!

I'm too much of a snob...I won't settle for "good." If it was "Great Reads," then I might have to check it out...

What I notice about Good Reads is, when you look at customers' reviews on Alibris merchandise, there are CLOUDS of reviews submitted by GR. I think there must be some sort of monetary relationship between Alibris and GR. I mean I don't know that, but I can't otherwise explain why so many GR reviews are showing up in Alibris 'customer review' columns.

About the GR reviews themselves: most of them are just trash. For the most part they write gibberish in the most childish terms imaginable. I taught remedial composition to illiterate high-school grads (think about that: illiterate high-school grads) for two years and the GR reviews I see on Alibris are pretty much all written at that level.

I don't know how everyone feels about that, but when I see a book rated at four or five stars by someone who is obviously illiterate it doesn't speak well for the book -- or for the venue in which that review appears. Alibris, I think, ought to rethink their relationship with GR, if such a relationship exists.

Message 8: *grins*. I wonder what Tim thinks of that one!
Message 12: , exactly!

Message 20: we don't want to change LT into another GoodReads. Otherwise we wouldn't be here and stay here. But I really care about the site, and about LT's future. Zoë too, and is one of the few members that shows their concern about the site by posting about bugs or asking for features (or asking to make features better). That's why she opened the thread.

26 and 27: exactly, that's why I want LT to connect the data more and use the data more. Along with some tweaks in the lay-out I think it would make it easier for users to contribute data (whether it is a review or something else) and discuss it. Also, I guess we would have more interaction if Talk and Groups were restructured. I believe that for newcoming users the chaos of the groups and talk are a dealbreaker. I guess because at Good Reads they don't have the noise and chaos we have, people participating in their groups can be more motivated by a discussion to take part in group reads or write reviews.

>39 I'm always pleasantly surprised to see the correct spelling of my name here!

when you look at customers' reviews on Alibris merchandise, there are CLOUDS of reviews submitted by GR. I think there must be some sort of monetary relationship between Alibris and GR.

Not necessarily. When I review a book, I do so here, on Amazon, on my blog, often on B&N and Alibris as well.

I'll add my opinion since I've used Shelfari, GR and LT all pretty heavily before finally deciding to stick with LT.

Shelfari has a nifty user interface. I like that it's basically mouse-over-and-click to add a book to one of your shelves or to move it between shelves (from TBR to reading to read). I like that when you switch a book from reading to read, it saves that date as the day you read it. I wish LT did all this better because I really like keeping track of what I read when (why? I dunno. I'm neurotic.) However, you can't add or customize shelves, their import function is next to useless (very important to me as I had some 700 books to import from a list I keep on my library's website), and, Queen of Tact that I'm not, I'm just going to say it's full of idiots.

GR has a moderately less shiny interface. It has a pretty good shelf system, but it DOESN'T HAVE TAGS. I NEED TAGS. So I had about 200 shelves on it, which just gives me a headache. I don't think it had any particularly impressive search abilities (like the ability to search the intersection of two shelves), either. I like that it also makes it easier to track what you read when. It even has a little "I'm on page X of Such-and-Such" module on the home page. Which, really, is taking it a little far, but cool. But as was mentioned above in 32, it's basically a social networking site about books, not particularly good for finding recommendations if you don't feel like friending everybody.

From their "about us" page:

"When I want to know what books to read, I'd rather turn to a friend than any random person, bestseller list or algorithm. So I thought I'd build a website — a website where I could see my friends' bookshelves and learn about what they thought of all their books."

Not me. My friends don't necessarily share my tastes in the least, I like a lot of esoteric non-fiction, and I like algorithms, especially if they're good algorithms :)

I'm on LT now because it's more about books than about social networking, because I don't want to have to friend a bunch of random people to get anything out of the site, and because it FINALLY HAS COLLECTIONS, the lack of which was a deal-breaker when I first tried out this site several years ago. Mass-adding of books is leaps and bounds better on LT than either of the others. I LOVE statistics and memes, I love Common Knowledge (and will love it more the more it's integrated into different ways of exploring books). I love the book recommendations, and I love that from an LT work page I can search for the book in my public library with one click (ok, two clicks now that there's the lightbox.) I wish it was a little less cumbersome to track what I read and when I read it, I wish I could mark individual books as private, and I wish I didn't keep tripping over bugs.

Aaand that's my story, my apologies to anyone who actually read this far!

GoodReads attracts a wider range of readers than LT, and that will affect the tone of reviews. Their groups feature also used by many junior high and high school English classes, so that has an impact. But I hesitate to assume that if LT had the same quantity of reviews that they wouldn't end up with a similar mix of styles.

"LT has some great data and stats to share (for a price!) that GR does not have"

Which data?

GR was designed around keeping track of books you've read, while LT was designed around listing books you own. I think they're kinda becoming the same website, but very slowly.

GR is about to add support for keeping track of which books you own, seperate from your book reviews.

GR is about to add support for keeping track of which books you own, seperate from your book reviews.

I think this is the most worrying thing I've heard all day.

If LT tries to be "different" and not compete with GR, while GR does choose to compete by duplicating LT's functionality, I don't see how this can end well for LT.

Just to add, personally I don't find GR interesting at all for what I want to do. I prefer the feature-rich nature of LT, and I don't find LT difficult to use. But I've been here for a while, and I also recognize that people's brains work differently and what's intuitive for one person isn't for another. But I know from hanging around talk and occasionally answering questions in FAQ, etc., that some people do {find LT difficult, I mean}, and that sometimes some aspects of LT aren't intuitive for some people and sometimes the feature-rich nature of LT can be overwhelming for some people - particularly for some new users. I don't at all think we need somehow to dumb down LT; and tend not to be that sympathetic to questions where someone obviously haven't bothered to try to try to figure something out for him/herself. However, I do think that there are things that could be done in terms of site navigation, help pages, tutorials, etc. that could help a lot. I also think a powerful site-wide search available from every page would help a lot, even for discovering new features and areas of the site (and for re-finding them when you can't remember where they were...). A lot of web and site design is about making things that are complicated seem intuitive; much as I love LT, there is always room for improvement.
(edited to add parenthetical and then to fix botched use of square brackets. oops.)

Message edited by its author, Okt 23, 2009, 8:30pm.

45>

So, adding "owned books" is duplicating all of LT's functionality, like good-quality data and 600+ library sources? I think you're engaging in a wee bit of hyperbole.

LT absolutely should continue to introduce new features, but they absolutely shouldn't dumb down the site because other sites out there don't have as many features.

So, adding "owned books" is duplicating all of LT's functionality, like good-quality data and 600+ library sources? I think you're engaging in a wee bit of hyperbole.

No more than all the people who say things like
So, lose what makes LT distinct? No, thank you. Look, LT is different from GoodReads. Losing that individuality is a terrible idea.

How can it be a terrible idea for LT to lose its individuality by imitating the successful aspects of GR, while it's okay for LT to lose its individuality through encroachment by GR?

Either way, the sites are going to become more similar. Either GR can steal market share from LT, or the other way around. I know what my preference is.

"LT was designed around listing books you own"

I've never understood where this idea comes from. You can enter any list of books you want on LT. No one's going to come to your house and see if you own them. So is it just the name (LibraryThing vs. Goodreads) or is there some real difference in features?

The most commonly stated claim seems to be that it is easier to add books on Goodreads. But how does this work that is somehow more efficient than searching for the book and clicking to add?

The most commonly stated claim seems to be that it is easier to add books on Goodreads. But how does this work that is somehow more efficient than searching for the book and clicking to add?

You can add with one click from wherever you see the book, rather than going to a separate search page.

I'm concerned more that LT survives - which doesn't seem to be a worry - than that it grows faster than Goodreads. My understanding is that libraries pay LT a comfortable amount for its data and that this keeps it afloat. If Goodreads doesn't compete on that dimension, then good.

You can add with one click from wherever you see the book, rather than going to a separate search page.

This would only be useful if you frequently happen across books you want to add. It's not something that would work for me, though I can see how others might find it helpful. But even in the best case scenario I think you would still have to add a lot of books through search and click.

Also, does this mean there are "add this book" links displayed everywhere you see a book on the site? I would find that very annoying.

I'm concerned more that LT survives - which doesn't seem to be a worry - than that it grows faster than Goodreads. My understanding is that libraries pay LT a comfortable amount for its data and that this keeps it afloat. If Goodreads doesn't compete on that dimension, then good.

Yes, but for how long? GR has data too; they could equally start selling it to libraries. With more members, they'll have even more data--and more money to spend developing and promoting features for libraries.

It's not enough to stand still and hope that everyone else does too. If you're not constantly improving, you'll fall behind. See MySpace.

>52 This would only be useful if you frequently happen across books you want to add.

Yes, but the people most likely to happen across books that they want to add are the ones first exploring the site and trying to decide whether they like it. People who have already catalogued most of their books (and are already familiar with the site) don't need this sort of thing as much, but those aren't the people LT is at risk of losing to GR.

Also, does this mean there are "add this book" links displayed everywhere you see a book on the site?

Yeah, it does, but I don't think it's necessarily too obtrusive.

At the moment I do prefer LibraryThing. I use Goodreads for only a couple of things. I think Goodreads is just about to mark their third anniversary. I'm pretty impressed by their growth. Neither site is in its final form. Nor probably ever will be. Competition is good. It'll keep both sites in fighting trim.

Okay, I admit I only skimmed some of these posts, 'cause 55 in one go is too hard on my half-awake brain. But I'll put my 2cents in anyways.

I check out the "competition" every so often just to look around, I think I have an account on most of them, including GoodReads. I haven't done much anywhere else though.

I agree that GR gives a more user-friendly feel upfront, and seems to cater more towards "trend readers" and "social readers", at least in appearance. It's not... it's not as down-and-gritty, I guess. Like, you enter books, you talk about them, etc etc...

LibraryThing, imo, focuses more on the details... Tags, reviews, CK, Series... Cataloguing isn't a one-stop-and-done thing, it's a constant work in progress, and I think the site draws more serious cataloguers then GR is geared toward. And I don't see that as a good OR bad thing.

Maybe it's just me, but when I was on GR (spent six months there) the whole vibe seemed - I don't know what the right word is - generic? plebian? average? Goodreads might be "bigger" at the moment too simply because they've been around longer, I believe, than LT? The reviews I read over there were largely lackluster, garden variety "oooh, I really liked this book; I read it in two sittings!" except, of course, the reviews written by the many LTers who also post their work over there, along with the rare, exceptional Goodreaders. Lots of bonafide authors with GR accounts, though, I will say. And that damn trivia game they have over there is too addictive for my taste. There are some users there who have literally answered more than 50,000 book related trivia questions!

The only feature I thought was really cool was their "Your Writing" page, which allows you to post lenghty bits of your creative work if you're so inclined, a feature yet unavailable over here in LT (not that I'm complaining, unlike some who seem to just not be happy no matter what Tim & Co. have done and/or are doing over here ((do pardon the snark ;-)).

The people were cool on GR, like they generally are everywhere, but comparing GR to LT is, to me, like vainly trying to compare your high school science project to your Ph.D. dissertation - no comparison really.

Message edited by its author, Okt 24, 2009, 12:11am.

Actually, LT has been around longer, I'm pretty sure. GR took off very quickly.

There's much to say here. I confess I am just coming to this thread. I'll come back, with more to say.

First, traffic:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/library...

Compete excludes all non-US traffic. Goodreads is big in Indonesia, but has no non-English sites. LT has significant non-US traffic, and lots of non-US sites. In general, as regards traffic, we're impressed to keep pace, considering they are free and aimed lower in some way.

As regards holdings, we have different demographics. They'll have more young adult fiction because, well, they have lots more young adults. Our long tail is longer. If you want to talk about Twilight, you have thousands more people to do it with. In general, I'm not sure more is better after a point, so I like that on LT lots of more obscure books are still popular—which isn't always the case on GR.

Overall, they're our competition. We watch them closely. We are working every day to make the site better. (Believe me, we haven't released in a few weeks, but we're not standing still.) At the same time, we serve only partially overlapping needs and groups. So, we want to grow and we want to poach users from them, and prevent them from poaching ours, but we aren't eager to become like them in most of the ways the separate us.

Incidentally, on the invite thing, Google broke it for us. We're going to replace it with their friend-connect infrastructure.

"Let's make reading fun again!" makes me want to vomit too.

In general, there's a commitment vs. member-count thing. The FB one, Visual Bookshelf, claims near 100 million books listed, and it certainly has hundreds of thousands of people using it. At the same time, their users aren't doing very interesting things, for them or for the users and what they have is, essentially, a Facebook app. full of teenagers. They've got a pile of money now, and they're using it to do everything but books—beer and movies and skiing and etc. Shelfari is a step from them, then Goodreads, then LibraryThing.

Message edited by its author, Okt 24, 2009, 4:07am.

Believe me, we haven't released in a few weeks, but we're not standing still.

I didn't actually mean that LT was standing still, only to refute the statement that LT was great as it was and therefore didn't need to do more (though I admit, it is strange when we're losing features rather than gaining them, even for a short period of time).

>61 The thing is, VB has one huge advantage: some of my friends are using it. So even while acknowledging that LT is much better, I still have to use VB occasionally. I think that has to count for something.

I didn't actually mean that LT was standing still, only to refute the statement that LT was great as it was and therefore didn't need to do more .

Did someone say that? If so, I would also disagree with that statement.

#49 eromsted - "LT was designed around listing books you own"

I've never understood where this idea comes from. You can enter any list of books you want on LT. No one's going to come to your house and see if you own them.

To me it's the fact that in order to add a book to a library one has to choose an edition at a very specific level. The other sites have a more generic work approach to filling users shelves. If GR is about reading and not owning, it doesn't make a difference. The fact that LT treats books differently comes down on the owning side simply because of its specificity. This distinction really came to me when collections hit and I started entering read not owned book and wishlist books. With very few exceptions I didn't remember and didn't care which edition I picked, but still had to pick one. It's not representative at all as to which physical book I actually read.

>64 Not to mention the existence of collections like "Read but not owned", which imply that owning is the default state.

That's very true and I admit how I approached it...library to me conjures up a reference set I can have access to, actual material, not vaporware so yeah, I'm a literalist.

>66

Me too!

> 62

only to refute the statement that LT was great as it was and therefore didn't need to do more

No one has suggested that. What has been said is that any changes should not necessarily be in the direction of making this site more like GoodReads. That's not the same thing.

> 49

"LT was designed around listing books you own"

I've never understood where this idea comes from.

The idea comes from the fact that that is, indeed, how it was designed. See the Wiki: "Tim started it as a pet project, to catalog his own library and for academic and bibliophile friends." (Emphasis mine) http://www.librarything.com/press/#3

Though later he changed his concept to include all the "literary furniture" of his mind (not an exact quote) - books he had read as well as owned.

--> 57

Now you've made me want to go check out GR's Trivia (...my curiosity got the better of me).

*checks out GR's Trivia...and plays it for a while*

*leaves GR and returns to LT to play A Silly Book Game*

I decided I'm happier here. :)

Message edited by its author, Okt 24, 2009, 1:25pm.

I decided I'm happier here. :)

Me too! You're very lucky, Squeaky, that you were able so easily, apparently, to pull yourself away from that heroin-like trivia. Much happier here myself - and sober, in recovery.

I keep thinking about this business with library catalog-level data. I like that, because I'm a librarian.

But really, the reason I like LT and the reason I wince when my good friends like GR, is because of the relationship with the books -- the seriousness with which people approach their books. What Tim has called a "connection" with their books. The "connectedness" a person feels *might* be ownership and concern with catalog-data; but it might also be interest in reading & discussing. LT could do a number of things to improve the reading & discussion part of this.

- a good reading log. Now that I have "Currently Reading", I want to jot page numbers while I read a book. Sunday night, p.245. Monday night, p.564 & done. And then, I don't know, have something done with that information.
- more integration between reviews, discussions, and individual books; see other discussions on this point elsewhere.
- more use of CK data, book trivia, and so forth; see other discussions on this point elsewhere.
- ability to add generic editions. On this point, a lot of people squeal & complain that this will destroy the character of LT. It will not. The majority of records are currently drawn from Amazon, and I can guarantee you that many of them ought to be "generic editions" -- in other words, they are specific editions that might be *wrong* because the person who added them doesn't care.

Anyway, I worry, because I've invested a lot of time & interest & work into this site, and I like it, and it's got a lot of potential to be useful to the world. But I can't make it succeed, and that lack of control makes me anxious. )-8

Message edited by its author, Okt 24, 2009, 1:58pm.

>53 If you're not constantly improving, you'll fall behind. See MySpace.

That's actually an example of why I'm not concerned. MySpace isn't really falling behind so much as that the social networking sites are sorting out into very specific demographics, so it's increasingly rare to belong to one and know anyone who belongs to the other. There was an academic paper on the topic about six months ago but it popped up on NPR just this week. Thursday, I think.

--> 72

I want to jot page numbers while I read a book. Sunday night, p.245. Monday night, p.564 & done. And then, I don't know, have something done with that information.

I'd like that, too. It's a fun stat that can be integrated with Currently Reading so that if you put in the page number, it will instantly calculate what percentage of the book you've finished. From that information, others can determine how much of the book you've read (so as not to divulge spoilers). In addition, it would make me feel as if I were making some progress in books that I read too slowly. :)

Message edited by its author, Okt 24, 2009, 3:12pm.

>73

The theory is that MySpace/Facebook splits along class and race lines. Danah Boyd* has made a name for herself on that topic, and some others. I think there's truth to it. Social networks have both network effects and whatever you call the reverse.

Frankly, while I eat, sleep and breathe the competitive situation, I am focused on making LT the best place it can be. That means making the site better, and making sure it succeeds as a company.** In the long run, it's about what we build, both as a company and a community.

My big concern is lock-in. If people can move between systems, we can compete and win. But it doesn't escape our notice that Visual Bookshelf and WeRead have no export function—of course, they slurp up LibraryThing (and GoodReads) data very nicely—or that Amazon doesn't expose Kindle data to the outside world. The same is essentially true of the Sony Reader, and, I suspect, will be true of the Nook.

*who prefers her name uncapitalized, but I don't!
**Thoughts on structure:

I don't envy GoodReads financial position. Advertising will not float a company of their size (or ours). They are certainly losing money. They just did another round—sold off more stock. Unlike LibraryThing, they don't talk about that sort of thing; I think community members deserve more candor.

Anyway, it's clear to me that they're not looking to build a traditional business. They were a classic startup flipping-play from the start. The angels and venture capitalists who invested in them aren't going to let them continue forever without cashing out, and we're coming on three years. I would bet $100 they'll sell in the next year or so. Amazon has always been the most likely buyer, but with Amazon already owning Shelfari and a minority piece of LibraryThing, that's harder. (And if Amazon owned Goodreads, I can't see how they could avoid selling their stake in LibraryThing, as it would give them all sorts of inconsistent obligations.) Either way, I can't wait for them to be bought. At the moment they're staying up nights, working weekends and burning through capital to look good to acquirers. Companies like that get slow and lazy when they're bought.

LibraryThing is in quite the opposite position. I am not going to sell out, and nobody can make me. We have a team of people who love the ideas involved, people who "think reading is still fun."

75 tim > I am not going to sell out, and nobody can make me. We have a team of people who love the ideas involved, people who "think reading is still fun."
I love to hear that.

A GIANT hurrah for Tim & Abby and the crew who pay attention to us . . . I find this site a welcome place to visit, and I glean valuable information from members.

Companies like that get slow and lazy when they're bought.

LibraryThing is in quite the opposite position. I am not going to sell out, and nobody can make me. We have a team of people who love the ideas involved, people who "think reading is still fun."

Thanks; this is reassuring. I hope GR fails sooner rather than later.

I hope they don't fail since where else can their users go? The two exist for a reason and as long as each finds enough sustenance among their target audiences and partners, there will be room for both. It's a big internet.

It's a big internet.

Not that big.

Message edited by its author, Okt 26, 2009, 7:54am.

Well, maybe "fail" was too strong a word. "Stops succeeding so much?"

Hm. How come you begrudge them success?

>82 Because ultimately, if they continue being so successful, I think LT is going to suffer for it.

A) _Zoe_ is being paid by LT.

B) Goodreads is run by an evil cabal of lizard people, bent on world domination. First your library, then your soooooul...

C) _Zoe_ has placed a substantial wager against Goodread's success.

Take your pick.

How do you figure that?

oh MrA, your cynicism is showing.

Message edited by its author, Okt 26, 2009, 8:41am.

Lizard people ... I like it ... do you think Shelfari is the domain of the slug people ;-)

>86 Amoebas

#85

D) None of the above.. Zoe doesn't believe the internet is as big as some others do and feels that if GR succeeds, then GR's success comes at LT's expense.

#84

You are David Icke and ICMFP.

Don't tell me that.. Just spent the morning setting up my account on this (having been told this WAS the place to come)!!!! ps - don't worry administrator, I'm sticking here!

I am on both sites. I started on LT first, but then went to GR the week or so LT was down back in the day. I was going through withdrawal.

GR also has an import feature so it was quick to upload most of my books. But since it never struck me as a serious place about books, I didn't add all my non-ISBN books by hand, like I did here.

I don't find it easier to add books to GR than LT (as I buy them now). Because LT has tags, but GR has shelves, and you have to hunt for them, or create them. You have to search through pages and check a box next to each shelf you want added, rather than just type a list of tags in the same box.

I think there is a lack of statistical information on GR that means you have to hunt around if you want to find something out.

You can add your own covers on GR. You have to be a librarian (they accept anyone who asks with over 200 (?) books), and then you have to create another book with no ISBN, saying its an alternate cover. Very awkward, as is trying to add 2 or more of the same book, or the right edition of your specific book.

The one thing they had until very recently was fewer bugs, and they almost never went down. They seem to be unavailable a lot more now.

And they have several permanent bugs that have not been fixed, and have been blamed on the 'browser'. They type a message in text, saying what your previous action was at the top of the page - in red. And now it won't go away on FF or Safari. You press the X and it goes away, but reappears on the next page you go to.

Just recently it has taken to listing inaccurate information 'Oops We couldn't Find that book', when I was looking for reviews of Catching Fire, which it did find. It will stay with my account until I perform another action. It is anyone's guess if it will be accurate or another error.

As to their staying up weekends, I posted about a bug once on a Friday and was told they weren't around (publicly) on the weekends, so my problem would have to wait until Monday.

I have friends on GR and they are not youngsters, but they are not computer savy, or comfortable on them, and they think GR is easier.

I prefer LT, but do also use GR as a back up of sorts.

This thread made me go check out GoodReads for the fiirst time.

My initial impression was "Wow"! I loved how it lead with books -- lots and lots of books -- and was very graphic heavy. It felt more like browsing in a book store, that kid in a candy shop feeling of being surrounded by all the lovely books!

The presentation really suited me. I read current stuff, yes, the dreaded bestsellers. I don't keep much of a physical library -- I read once, then loan to friends, then on to bookmooch. But I'm always on the lookout for more great books.

It was only after adding a few books that I realized what was missing -- the statistics. I LOVE the statistics on LibraryThing. I'm a tagger, and I love looking at the tags to see if the themes I think I read most, really are the themes I read most. I love tag watch, and tagmashes, and tag clouds, and... well, I think you get the idea. And I love that LT automatically finds my similar libraries and shows me their activity. That's an incredible source of books to wishlist!

So while my initial impression of GoodReads made me momentarily regret not going there first, I believe I'm on LT to stay. Thanks, Tim and Co, for all the geeky goodness regarding my books -- even if I'm not a "cataloguer".

83> Because ultimately, if they continue being so successful, I think LT is going to suffer for it.

Do you think Myspace suffers from Facebook's success?

Do you think Apple suffers from Microsoft's success?

93> I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that MySpace has, indeed, suffered from Facebook's success. I have a number of friends (including myself) who all dropped the former in favor of the latter about 1 and a half to 2 years ago.

Beta from VHS?

"Do you think Apple suffers from Microsoft's success?"

Yes.

>93

Yes, I do. I think Apple/Microsoft is a better analogy, but yes, they can.

GW has paid addvertisements. They appear along the margins. Is that a sign of sucess? If LT had ads, would that mean Lt was more sucessful?

I belong to both sites. GW has more members, but LT seems to have more posters. I say "seems" because I haven't visited many sites. But on the ones I go to, it seems mostly the same "core" group of posters with new ones dropping in & dropping out. The threads on LT seem much more active.

> 92

That's interesting.

Because one of the things that I truly disliked about GR was how graphics-heavy it is. And if Tim decided to do away with all the stats and tagmashes and stuff like that, I'd be just as happy (if not more so).

>99 MOAR STATS!

Do you think Myspace suffers from Facebook's success?

Is this even debatable?

Google news about MySpace. You'll find articles like MySpace Remixed: Can the Also-Ran Social-Networking Site Reinvent Itself... and Growth of Facebook Leaves MySpace in Dust near the top.

Sure, there's a nice line about becoming more focused and finding its own niche. But considering that it used to be the fifth-most-popular website overall, it's fallen far.

Do you think Apple suffers from Microsoft's success?

Absolutely. Despite having a better product, Apple before the iPod was suffering hugely from Microsoft's success. The turning point came when they came out with something popular--which is exactly what a lot of LT users are saying should be avoided. Do you think Apple's current success is because it focused on a tiny niche market, or because its products appeal to groups like the dreaded "Facebook users"?

In a year where most traffic stats show more time being spent on social networks sites the decline in MySpace activity is telling. It will be interesting to see if a big social network site can reverse its decline. My thoughts are that it will be tough to do so. Most users are at their online time limits. When they add something to their online habits something else gets dropped from their online past.

I think Tim hit on something earlier that might explain the direction of GoodRead's near future. Friendster went live in 2003. It has faltered in North America and Europe. It has become an Asian dominated site. That's where its traffic and growth is coming from. It didn't go away, it morphed into something a bit different from what it started as.

And Orkut's user population is mainly in Brazil, if I recall correctly.

fwiw, I opened accounts at both GR & LT last night. I like the "heavyweight" feel of LT, as I will, eventually, be inputting a bunch of older books that don't have ISBN's (LC and DD #'s are a huge plus for me). And, GR has been unavailable all day today. Page won't load, timeout errors, etc.

Is there an optional extra field in LT to indicate where in my physical house (which shelf of which bookshelf in which room) a book can be found?

Is there an optional extra field in LT to indicate where in my physical house (which shelf of which bookshelf in which room) a book can be found?

Just use the tag feature.

...and welcome to LibraryThing! Hope you like it here.

Message edited by its author, Okt 27, 2009, 9:57pm.

101>

The ipod is unquestionably popular, but it was also different. Apple didn't try to make a poor copy of another product; they made their own thing and did it very, very well. You're suggesting that LibraryThing blindly scrap everything that makes them unique because it seems that in your eyes, 100 people who add five books each are worth ten times more to the site than ten people who add a thousand books each.

Ten people that add a thousand books each are ten times more helpful to the site than one person that adds ten thousand books. Or maybe 8.3 times more helpful, i'm bad at math.

One person that's added 289 books is less helpful than 289 people that have added 1 book each. If i'm the one person, that is. Helpful in terms of this thread, anyway.

*10,000 people immediately start scrambling for the "block member" button*

Is this even debatable?

Well, it's a topic of debate just how the two interact. The situation has some parallels with LT insofar as many keep accounts on both. I've heard it expressed that MySpace is who I am, and FB is what I'm doing. In my life, I never used MySpace. I used Facebook, but it's given way to Twitter. A LOT of people I know are the same.

Absolutely. Despite having a better product, Apple before the iPod was suffering hugely from Microsoft's success. The turning point came when they came out with something popular--which is exactly what a lot of LT users are saying should be avoided. Do you think Apple's current success is because it focused on a tiny niche market, or because its products appeal to groups like the dreaded "Facebook users"?

Interesting topic. I would disagree, in part. The iPod is part of it, but on the computer side, Apple has also been winning. That happened because the "app-gap" stopped mattering--Apple had the apps you had to use (Word, Photoshop, etc.) and the Mac was as good at the web. At that point, Apple become the "better" computer—the quality computer. It competed on style and quality, and PCs competed on price.

The apple message is that you can succeed without copying. Apple went through a period where it tried that--allowing others to build Macs, for example.

The ipod is unquestionably popular, but it was also different. Apple didn't try to make a poor copy of another product; they made their own thing and did it very, very well. You're suggesting that LibraryThing blindly scrap everything that makes them unique because it seems that in your eyes, 100 people who add five books each are worth ten times more to the site than ten people who add a thousand books each.

Damn you for saying it better than me.

*10,000 people immediately start scrambling for the "block member" button*

LA-LA-LA-I-CAN'T-HEAR-YOU!

Oh good, Tim's blocked me. I can start dissin' people.

You're suggesting that LibraryThing blindly scrap everything that makes them unique

I really think attitudes like this do more harm to the site than pretty much anything else.

How does adding features that would appeal to more people imply scrapping everything else? It just makes no sense.

Where did I say that LT should be a "poor copy" of GoodReads? I think LT could easily do everything GR does, and do it better, if only there weren't this prevailing phobia of anything with mass appeal.

Are you proud that you almost single-handedly convinced Tim to get rid of Currently Reading for a year or so, thus staving off the influx of the masses that such a "populist" feature might bring about?

The iPod is part of it, but on the computer side, Apple has also been winning. That happened because the "app-gap" stopped mattering--Apple had the apps you had to use (Word, Photoshop, etc.) and the Mac was as good at the web.

To a large extent, though, I think this was also dependent on the success of the iPod. When people have one Apple product, they gain familiarity with the brand and are more willing try other products from that same company. Microsoft had the huge advantage of being dominant and familiar, and it takes more than just a reportedly good product to make people give up the familiar and take a risk on something different.

All I know is that I see GoodReads tweets and Facebook updates from people on Goodreads the update what they are reading/rating/adding. And other people see that and sign up. And LT doesn't connect out that way well at all.

I like the cataloging feature set here that Goodreads doesn't have.

I'm following a few LTers on twitter that I interact with here, and Tim, cD, felius and Abbey all tweet as well. There's a #LibraryThing hashtag that's always got something fun in it.

All I know is that I see GoodReads tweets and Facebook updates from people on Goodreads the update what they are reading/rating/adding. And other people see that and sign up. And LT doesn't connect out that way well at all.

Yes. Some people have been pushing for more integration ever since FB apps became a possibility. Unfortunately, that might appeal to the masses.

I've been thinking more about the Apple analogy, and in particular about the iPhone. Apple came up with a great product, the iPod. And they didn't stop there. They didn't say, "We have a great music player and we're satisfied with that; we don't need it to be a poor copy of a cellphone as well." Instead, they made it a better version of a cellphone. And now they're even more successful.

So, LT is a great cataloguing site. It could stick to being a great cataloguing site, or it could become a great site both for cataloguing and for keeping track of what people are reading.

But development time isn't an infinite resource and isn't instantly flippable between tasks.

The choices are -
1) bug fix and tidy up and UI freshen up
2) do more stuff to improve on the cataloguing side (I can think of lots that has been previously discussed).
3) do more of the GR style stuff - make the system better for those who want to maintain a reading list, but also keep in all the cataloguing stuff, add better/more integration with FB, twitter and other systems.

Plus probably some more stuff.

I think that 2) is likely to win out most of the time. Why? Well it plays to LT's strengths, it plays to the development team's strengths, it is also more interesting and likely to push at the boundaries of how collaborative cataloguing systems can work.

113: Exactly Zoë! As I said earlier, at the core LT is Apple (with the look of Microsoft). To ensure LT's future they need to develop it more (and better) to keep it Apple. Goodreads might have the look of Apple, but not (yet) in their content.

Do more with reading and available data and features, and we will like LT even better than we already do!
The Internet may be big, but as for cataloging books there are only a few players.

But development time isn't an infinite resource and isn't instantly flippable between tasks.

Yes, but success leads to more money, developers, and development time. The time spent on a FB application would easily pay for itself.

Plus, some of the things required for easier reading tracking are already requested all the time on LT. I'm thinking particularly of generic editions that can be added right from the Work pages.

Huh. So today I learn the sole metric of success is number of users.

Interesting.

Of course, I used to work for a certain fancy German car manufacturer who would really, really disagree that aiming to be the number one overall car manufacturer was even a remote goal. As a business analyst, I got to see all sorts of interesting comparative data. I never once saw anything comparing said German car manufacturer to Ford or GM.

In fact, there was a point where a release of a certain model to the US market was fretted over. It had been available in Europe for quite some time (the #1 market for said vehicle line being Germany, #2 being the United States). Europe was very happy with this model (well, models - it was an entire series). But there was concern over releasing it to the United States. Why? Because the price point was close to $8K less than the cheapest model available in the US - putting it in line with a whole slew of cars said vehicle never competes with on price - things like Fords and GMs.

The worry was mostly that this pricing would alienate core customers at the expense of new customers that had zero brand loyalty. See, Ford and GM do sell a metric crap-ton of cars per year, but not to the same people over and over - they sell to new people, they have contracts to sell fleet vehicles and they run crazy discounts. The worry was that existing customers would feel that this was a dilution of the brand in the US and move to another fancy car company that wasn't "diluting" their brand with a "lesser" model. (High gas prices allowed the importation to happen since better fuel efficiency in the line sold it well.)

So, yeah, you can be the Ford or GM of anything - but you're doing it through sheer churn. You're constantly figuring out what thing will bring in more users and you're not retaining old customers. This costs A LOT of money - and you typically are spending it on getting folks into showrooms and not so much on stuff that keeps them with the brand.

So, back to the Goodreads vs. LibraryThing. Okay - so what if they have "so many more?" Do we know that this is apples to apples? Same number of books in each account? Same age of accounts? Is Goodreads able to make money in a substantial way that doesn't involve ads? If their ad revenue involves members viewing pages, how long is their average user on GR vs. LT? What goals must they meet to keep their investors happy? How much revenue do they lose by being down all day in ad income? What is the average spending power of a GR user for that ad view? How do publishers view GR vs. LT? How about other institutions? What kinds of projects do the sites have in the works as part of long-term growth/sustainability strategies?

There are honestly so many more questions I'd rather ask than "why don't we have the same number of users?"

117 >

Well, shoot, if you're going to go all logical and business-like about it, you'll take all the fun out of the thread.

>118 Oh, okay?

Um, GR is all, poo-poo heads! And we're totally sophisticated, so there!

In my expert analysis, that is!

Personally, I would rather go to the used bookstore where the person behind the counter can tell me 80 different things about some obscure author I like than to B&N or Borders where I can find out that I can get a free cappuccino if I purchase book X that day...although, I do like cappuccino sometimes.

Anyway, my meaning is this: it seems LibraryThing users are generally more passionate about books and reading than what I'm hearing about the users of GR. That being said and since I'm limited with the time I can spend socializing (either online or in person) I'd rather get the most quality for that time and get the most knowledge etc.

So...that seems to point to LT.

I think there's room for sites that aren't geared 'to the masses' (?) just like there's room for books and movies that aren't.

The biggest part of MySpace's shrinking marketshare the fact that they no longer the only choice. And that will always happen. Eventually there is competition and some people will switch no matter what you do. It's not a failure on their part. And allowing different sites to focus more on specific user interests benefits everyone, rather than the internet equivalent of us all watching the same 3 channels every night.

Still not seeing a threat. Libraries aren't going to start working with GoodReads to catalog and display their stuff.

I think LT is in a good place. MySpace vs. FaceBook isn't really a good comparison - unless there's something to compare before LT - since Friendster predated both MySpace and FaceBook and has really dropped off the map for users in the U.S. at least.

I think LT is in a good place because (at least my personal feeling is) it doesn't need to have many bells and whistles - I'm quite happy with what it provides. Maybe a couple little tweaks here and there would make it better, but certainly wouldn't be necessary for me to continue enjoying.

The worry was that existing customers would feel that this was a dilution of the brand in the US and move to another fancy car company that wasn't "diluting" their brand with a "lesser" model.

Again, it comes down to how much you believe that LT is for "elite" booklovers and shouldn't be diluted with lesser readers.

I don't think Tim has explicitly stated his position on this, but he did say that discussion of Twilight is allowed on Book Talk, despite the fact that many users would have preferred it to be otherwise. He's also stated that bad spelling and grammar are not flaggable offenses. As far as I know, even the people who objected most strongly to these decisions are still here.

As far as I know, even the people who objected most strongly to these decisions are still here.

I don't think people objected strongly to Twilight being allowed in Book Talk officially or to bad spelling and grammer being non-flaggable offenses. They might have preferred otherwise, but I don't remember seeing anyone say that LT should take the position that Twilight talk be prohibited and against the TOS in Book Talk and that spelling and grammar mistakes be suspension-worthy offenses.

There is a significant difference between taking the stand that users shouldn't be too snobby (and not changing the TOS to reflect that snobbery) and dedicating developer time towards additions that the target audience doesn't prioritize. So, I don't think that's a relevant point.

There is the question, though, of what is LT's target audience.

110>

Here's what you explicitly suggest as things to do:

? Search box on the main page,

What's a "main page"? There's already a search tab on every page. And, for the thousandth time, what would it search? All of LT? Your catalog? Which fields?

adding generic books from the work pages,

So much for LT's data quality. I mean, as an option, this isn't the worst thing in the world, but it shouldn't be promoted as the primary mechanism.

a bit more FB integration

So much for the appeal to catalogers rather than casual readers -- this is the "number of users versus number of books" issue. I don't think a few hundred or a few thousand free users with a couple dozen books each are going to do anything to help LibraryThing.

and the option to have more than 200 books with ads....

Dear God no. Just no.

Edited to add:

It's not so much that, other than the ad thing, these are intrinsically terrible ideas. It's that development time is finite, and that prioritizing everything toward attracting more causal users with very few books would be, I think, tremendously detrimental. One of LibraryThing's strengths, in addition to the far superior quality of data available, is the long tail -- that it's not just the most popular books that are represented, but the obscure ones as well. Anything that is solely oriented toward casual users dilutes this, and if it doesn't bring in actual paying users it doesn't create any value for LT.

I tried to find out the number of unique books on GoodReads, but, in keeping with their apparent "data is scary, let's show some pretty pictures instead" philosophy, they don't actually divulge that. I did notice that the average library size there is almost exactly half of that on LT.

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 12:44pm.

He's also stated that bad spelling and grammar are not flaggable offenses. As far as I know, even the people who objected most strongly to these decisions are still here.

I didn't actually see anyone objecting to those statements. What I did see were people objecting to:

1. Being told that pointing people to more appropriate groups (i.e. telling them about the existence of the dozens of Twilight groups when they posted about Twilight in Site Talk) was rude and inappropriate;

2. Being told that completely content-free posts in non-"off topic" groups were not flaggable. These are things like "wazzup dudez" in Recommend Site Improvements. It's not just a matter of "spelling and grammar", it's a matter of people trying to hijack the site for use as a private chatroom because their middle school blocks Facebook, or some such.

And, yeah, so far as I know, nobody's left, because in terms of data quality and actual cataloging LT is still the only game in town. That's why I'm so protective of it -- because there's nowhere else to go if they decide to ditch it to compete on purely cosmetic grounds instead.

There's already a search tab on every page.

This isn't the same thing at all. Why should people have to load another page for something so fundamental?

And, for the thousandth time, what would it search? All of LT? Your catalog? Which fields?

Could you point me to those thousand discussions? I can't seem to find them. The most obvious thing would be to search all of LT for titles and authors.

adding generic books from the work pages,

So much for LT's data quality. I mean, as an option, this isn't the worst thing in the world, but it shouldn't be promoted as the primary mechanism.

Because it's better to have all the fields full of data, regardless of whether that data actually applies to the book in question? Apparently we have very different ideas of "quality".

a bit more FB integration

So much for the appeal to catalogers rather than casual readers

Because people who catalogue thousands of books would never do such a mainstream thing as actually read them, right?

and the option to have more than 200 books with ads....

Dear God no. Just no.

I don't understand why this would hurt you. Are low-income people really such an undesirable demographic?

i.e. telling them about the existence of the dozens of Twilight groups when they posted about Twilight in Site Talk

This wasn't about Site Talk, it was about Book Talk. Which is an entirely appropriate place to discuss books of all kinds.

And, yeah, so far as I know, nobody's left, because in terms of data quality and actual cataloging LT is still the only game in town.

None of my proposed changes would decrease LT's cataloguing ability. As for data quality, see above.

#125 re Facebook integration

That's making a whole hell of a lot assumptions.

I am no way or fashion a casual reader and have over 1,000 books cataloged. The one thing I really want for LT is a decent Facebook app. And I know personally of several other LTers who feel the same way.

128> No kidding. Though, to be fair, it's hard to stay elitist when you let in the Facebookers.

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 12:53pm.

>129 #1 Elitists piss me off. #2 I AM a Facebooker. I'm already here!

Maybe I should have put a ;) at the end there?

We be in the same boat, Morphy.

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 12:59pm.

I personally don't care about having a Facebook app on LT, but as long as it doesn't interfere with what I'm doing (cataloging and "Talk"ing), I don't care. I do belong to Facebook, but find it pretty boring compared to here.

I do not want to see ads in any way, shape, or form. I see enough of that crap on other sites and LT is refreshingly free of it (Bookmooch is also ad free so far).

I can't see the benefit of "generic" books either - if you don't care about what edition of a book you have, just click on the first one you see, if you do care, as I do, you're willing to spend the time to get it right.

edited for syntax

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 1:14pm.

I do not want to see ads in any way, shape, or form. I see enough of that crap on other sites and LT is refreshingly free of it (Bookmooch is also ad free so far).

I can't imagine that LT would start showing ads to paid members. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be another option for people who aren't willing to pay for whatever reason.

>132 I can't see the benefit of "generic" books either - if you don't care about what edition of a book you have, just click on the first one you see, if you do care, as I do, you're willing to spend the time to get it right.

But then you're just perpetuating bad data. Well...not that the data itself is bad. (But then, sometimes it is!) But suddenly the most popular edition of every book becomes whichever one shows up at the top of the list. So the edition data becomes skewed and potentially misleading.

>132 if you don't care about what edition of a book you have, ...

The context I've seen this request in is for those books you don't have. E.g. wishlist books or borrowed books that you don't currently have to hand.

Of course I've been putting in a "best guess" edition for these cases. But given that I really have no clue what edition is involved, I feel a generic "edition" would, in these cases, be more accurate.

If I actually have the book available, I absolutely pick the best edition, with manual editing to get as close as possible.

So the edition data becomes skewed and potentially misleading.

I think this ship has sailed saltmanz. I would even be so bold as to bet money on the fact that the majority of users don't bother about edition. I have a love hate relationship with it myself. Sometimes I bother (my Folios are all manually added to reflect correct editions because they don't show up), but most times I just change the cover picture to the correct one and that's enough for me. I would bet that the majority of users, many of whom don't even make it to Talk, do much the same. That's not to say that others aren't more diligent but I'd betcha they're in the minority.

#134 saltmanz - Yes they are, aren't they? I personally spend a lot of time getting editions and covers right. I have 314 books to scan in right now (I just figured out how to do it recently and this is a 2 year backlog!) just to get the right cover.

But if you're wishlisting books or putting in books you read 20 years ago from the library, you won't care or won't remember. You just basically want the title and author.

133. I think that's the key - I don't think it's being biased against low-income people, I think it's being biased against those who don't feel like supporting the site. I doubt many people are on the site who couldn't afford a lifetime membership. If you're on the site, you probably have a computer, or a job, or at least a bunch of books. If you have a bunch of books, you probably can spare $20 or whatever it is for a lifetime membership...

So in that way, I don't think people should be rewarded for not wanting to support. On the other hand, if the LT crew needed/wanted to raise funds and sold ad space to non-payers, or even gave them the option - like, "First 100 books free, no ads. Want more? Monthly memberships are x, lifetime memberships are x, or choose to have banner ads displayed."

I guess, I don't really care on that as long as I don't have to see them. :)

>136 I think you're absolutely right.

I think the evidence is in the fact that the green plus had to be crippled to prevent the spread of bad data. Rather than making it harder for people to add books in an attempt to change their behaviour, shouldn't the site have a proper mechanism for letting people do what they're going to do anyway?

>136: really? This is what I'd love to have a simple poll about!
When I came here, I was absolutely 100% certain that everyone else got their editions right (at least about the books they own) so I've been boringly meticulous about them (too), fixing details manually if I cannot find the correct edition from libraries...
About books I've read in the past (my reading diary from the nineties) I take the edition I think was most likely to be The One -- in any case, I don't select editions that have come later than the year I read the book...
I guess I've really been awfully naïve thinking that each and every LTer watches out for the correct editions...**blushing** Now that I think about it, there's really no need for it as your collection is Yours only... It's just that I'm such a (cannot-find-a-right-word) that I see no point in my own library catalogue unless it is Just So.

No point in this posting, really, just musing on one's own naivite :D

I don't think it's being biased against low-income people, I think it's being biased against those who don't feel like supporting the site.

The thing is, people first need to be involved with the site to know that it's something they want to support. Since there exists a similar site that doesn't cost anything, I think a lot of people don't even give LT a chance.

"First 100 books free, no ads. Want more? Monthly memberships are x, lifetime memberships are x, or choose to have banner ads displayed."

Nice proposal to put to an advertiser: "We'll only show your ad to people unwilling or unable to pull their wallet" ;-P

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 1:37pm.

Ads for non-paying members with over 200 books seems like a good idea on the surface, but it would mean that Tim would have to redesign the pages for the ads to fit. And not just for the non-paying members but for everyone, since I doubt Tim is going to want to maintain two version of every page with and without ads. So if Tim were to do this I imagine that there will be an effect on paying members, which is less data on the pages and extra white space where the ads would have been.

I too am careful about my additions. I think there are a lot of us.

People are going to put in bad data, so let's make it easier? That bothers me.

People are going to put in bad data, so let's make it easier? That bothers me.

That's not it at all. People want to put in good data, which for wishlist books is just the title and author (for the vast majority of the time). Currently you're forcing them to add a real edition and edit out all the edition-specific stuff, which a lot of people won't bother to do and voila, bad data.

And it's not just wishlist books. I am lead to believe that a lot of people just pick the first edition that shows up in the search, which if they don't own the book is bad data. A generic edition at least lets them enter less good data rather than bad data if that is what they would have done anyway.

But it's not bad data. That's my issue with this. LT is your catalogue and your record of your own collection ... physical or not. There's no 'bad data' about it. LT's prime purpose is not as an aggregator of which editions people have. You don't know why I have any books in my catalogue, nor do I of anyone. Are they owned? Wanted? Some other reason? When you start bandying terms like 'bad data' around, it's just plain wrong. I'm not saying that people who worry about editions are wrong at all. Whatever you can live with or need in your catalogue is fine, just like I don't want anyone messing around with my odd and random book shelf order at home. But that's just what you choose to do. If I choose to do it differently then that's not 'bad data', just a different approach to recording the data that I need (I don't *need* edition data).

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 1:40pm.

I too am careful about my additions. I think there are a lot of us.

I'm not saying there aren't a lot of people but I would stand by my assertion that I'd bet that the majority of users (and let's not forget, the vociferous ones are a tiny percentage of users if I recall the figures Tim's cited before correctly) don't necessarily worry too much about that.

No, no. Here's what I meant about bad data.

Zoe said:

I think the evidence is in the fact that the green plus had to be crippled to prevent the spread of bad data. Rather than making it harder for people to add books in an attempt to change their behaviour, shouldn't the site have a proper mechanism for letting people do what they're going to do anyway?

> 147: Yes, I try to be careful about my actual library info too. But I'll usually only edit the info I get from an external source when the book actually arrives. Before that it may have been in my "wishlist" collection for some time. Books in that collection are - as far as I'm concerned - really sort of generic (unless I really really want some specific edition of a work of course).

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 1:46pm.

I meant, people are going to enter books without regard for edition. This was cited in the past as leading to serious problems with "bad data", whatever that means.

My conclusion was that it should be easier to enter books without an edition, in a way that will lead to less bad data, not that it should be easier to enter bad data.

Gotcha.

I meant, people are going to enter books without regard for edition. This was cited in the past as leading to serious problems with "bad data", whatever that means.

No, I don't think that's the bad data avoided by disabling the green plus. Point was that - for example - somebody might add a book by a certain author, and copy/paste add it again for another book by that same author (editing the title but not ISBN, etc.). Now if somebody else comes along using a "green plus" on that entry that just automatically copies anything entered by that first user, then you are proliferating BAD data.

Of course people can still enter books with titles and ISBN that don't match - or whatever -, but at least LT doesn't help spreading that kind of data anymore.

(p.s.: but I do agree a book without edition info is better than one with wrong info)

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 2:02pm.

Again, it comes down to how much you believe that LT is for "elite" booklovers and shouldn't be diluted with lesser readers.

I never said any such thing - you assume brand dilution is the concern only for elite brands?

Funny, there are attack ads pointing out that Honda makes lawnmowers in an effort to point out that another car company has the time to focus on their core product.

Toyota only brought Yaris over when they felt that gas prices here were high enough for Americans to view Yaris as a viable and fuel efficient vehicle instead of a cheap and scary-looking tin can that would harm the cache of the Toyota brand.

Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and Rachel Ray are all suing various Acacai berry advertisers for dilution of brand - and all of them attempt to talk to regular people every day. Rachel Ray's advertising of Ritz Crackers alone shows her want to be "just like everyone else" - but she still doesn't want dilution of brand.

Lipton Tea won't slap its label on just anything because it wants to have a certain quality level in the brand.

In the juice aisle, you'll have juice blends and 100% juices and juice-like drinks all selling along similar price points, all aimed at different markets. They will carry their same brand identity, but you won't find a 100% Juice Line deciding to suddenly dilute the line with some Dino-Roar-Berry-Blast Beverage! to capture more of the market.

You mistake marketing distinctions as being automatically elitist. You fail to see market segments that have nothing to do with elitism. Or do you automatically assume that if one laundry detergent markets itself as hypo-allergenic that it must be elitist? Or just maybe the detergent decided to succeed in a specific market segment instead of trying to be all things to all people?

Being that I had access to the actual marketing keys in the industry that I came from, I can assure you that the main fear with dilution wasn't from an elitist perspective, but from a quality and performance perspective - especially since advertising surrounded those points. The price point further meant that sites like edmunds.com would pull up the cars that they weren't formerly compared with and this would present a confusing message.

Again, I was unaware that the only metric of success anywhere in business - brick n' mortar or internet - was "number of customers."

142> Nice proposal to put to an advertiser: "We'll only show your ad to people unwilling or unable to pull their wallet" ;-P

But then, that's how many successful sites actually operate. (At BoardGameGeek, for example, you get ads all over the place unless you make an annual donation.)

125 etc.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what people want from a Facebook app, then, whether it's "Facebook to LT" or "LT to Facebook". I've been envisioning something where people could use Facebook to interact with LT, fostering a shallow interaction (i.e. they just use it to track what they're currently reading and nothing more); it sounds like you're talking about people who already use LT being able to have information on Facebook? I think we're talking about apples and oranges, then; your version doesn't seem problematic at all.

153>

What you said. Every word.

It's not about elitism, it's about having a niche.

> 154: Really? Whahahah! I guess it takes all kinds amongst advertisers too.

> 156: Not a clue. Personally I would like to be able to put a good widget / link on my Facebook profile, other than that: not really interested...

> 141'

Since there exists a similar site that doesn't cost anything, I think a lot of people don't even give LT a chance.

There is? Where? I've looked at a lot of book-related sites (GoodReads among them), and none that I find are comparable to LT.

> 138

I doubt many people are on the site who couldn't afford a lifetime membership . . . If you have a bunch of books, you probably can spare $20 or whatever it is for a lifetime membership

If I recall correctly, although there is an amount suggested, the actual cost is "whatever you choose to pay". That, of course, strengthens your argument.

> 160: Doesn't that - again - come down to why you actually would use LT? If you want to enter some books and chat, then Shelfari might be fine. But if you care about being able to catalogue your books, even if they're out of print, rare, in odd languages, never mind if Amazon knows about them, whatever...

I want an LT app on Facebook to show what I am reading/have read to my friends and family. I want to rate it with 1 to 5 stars on LT, like I do with Netflix, and have it show on my Facebook page. Then I can comment on it on Facebook. "Mom, you've got to read this!"

There are apps that already do something similar, but I want it to connect to LT, not some app that millions of other people are using. For instance, if they click on the book, I want the work page on LT to pop up.

I don't know anything about posting to Facebook and having it appear on LT. That sounds odd and too complicated to me.

I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this, but the reason I'm careful about cataloging the correct editions of my books is for insurance purposes. In the horrible event that I lost my books in a fire or flood, I'd like to get my books back, as closely as possible. I realize it wouldn't be exact.

I want my rare, Easton Press, hardcover, infrequent first edition, 1920s Harvard Classics, etc.

I'm betting it's a small number of us, but having a record for this purpose is important to me.

In addition, I'm a detail-oriented person. It bothers me when things are incorrect in the most important collection of things I own.

> 164: Though I can relate, I know my insurance won't accept my claim based just on the fact what I've listed on LT. After all, I could list anything here - the original manuscript versions of the "Book of Kells" and the "Voinich Manuscript" - worth millions - doesn't mean I own them.

Photos of bookshelves, and photos of specific books in my house.......

160>Since there exists a similar site that doesn't cost anything, I think a lot of people don't even give LT a chance.

There is? Where? I've looked at a lot of book-related sites (GoodReads among them), and none that I find are comparable to LT.

I think the point is that at first glance they seem similar and if you just go with GR because its free than you'll never find out how LT is better.

Agreed sphies-choice, layout and usability are two main concerns for LT. I am a member of both and it's so much easier to organize and keep my books organized on GoodReads than here.

So reading this all the two big changes I would make are: (1) an import data tool that would allow people that started on another site to easily try LT and (2) an FB app.

You can't import the data if the other guy doesn't export it.

You can export data from GoodReads, but LT will only import specific fields. Repopulating reviews and ratings, for example, would be onerous (unless that has recently changed, since I haven't really tried).

I think there's room for both tools, and obviously there are people who use both and probably for different reasons which underscores the point that the tools meet different needs.

#20 mentioned thinking in words rather than images. I'm that way too which is why I like the organization and functionality of LT better. I only go to GoodReads to read reviews on books I've already read, and oftentimes the same people over there are posting reviews here, so there's a lot of overlap.

Message edited by its author, Okt 28, 2009, 4:23pm.

I realized I missed responding to the earlier point about white space caused by lack of ads. Is it very hard to move the content up to fill in the space that the ads would have filled? Do sites where you pay to disable ads generally have lots of white space where the ads would have been? I don't have any experience with this myself.

I think the point is that at first glance they seem similar and if you just go with GR because its free than you'll never find out how LT is better.

Right.

If I recall correctly, although there is an amount suggested, the actual cost is "whatever you choose to pay".

Is this stated anywhere before you actually click on the payment link? If not, it obviously doesn't help as a selling point.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what people want from a Facebook app, then, whether it's "Facebook to LT" or "LT to Facebook".

I think the most important is LT to Facebook (i.e., free advertising). If regular LT members had an easy, non-intrusive way to share their basic LT interactions (started reading, finished reading, rated) with 200+ other people apiece, I think it would generate a lot of interest.

Of course, I think it would be a lot more effective if there were at least a basic version of LT for Facebook (maybe with generic editions and only social, rather than bibliographic, data). I'm not concerned with this actually being a part of LT; the data from FB users could stay segregated on FB unless they explicitly chose to import it to LT proper. The main thing is just to generate interest in LT, and maybe some advertising revenue too.

>168 I don't find that at all. I thought GR's shelves were awesome for about four minutes, until I realized they don't have tags. It makes my head hurt to look at how my books are organized on there.

158> I guess I don't see the hilarity. Tell me what the difference is between a site that gets 10K visitors/day who see ads and a site with 15K visitors/day where only 2/3 of them see ads...?

171>

#20 mentioned thinking in words rather than images. I'm that way too which is why I like the organization and functionality of LT better.

Me too, and I suspect a lot of people here do (it's a book site, after all), and I'd make my own database before I'd use GoodReads -- that sort of "oh, can't show them actual information, it's scary" attitude really rubs me the wrong way.

No tags? No use of sources other than Amazon? No way to find people with similar libraries? Why are we even talking about it as though it's the same kind of thing as LT?

I've been reading this thread with interest and, having never looked at GoodReads before popped on over. I took a peep at the 'Recently Reviewed' page and one of the first reviews on the page is a book by Sophie Kinsella which is recommended for 'Women'. So much I could say, but won't. Vive la difference!

Long live "No ads"!!!!!

#154, #158

The advertising on BGG works because it is incredibly focused. They are also quite tough - a few adverts have been pulled by the admins because they were annoying to the users.

Could a similar focused advertising work on LT? Well, maybe - but I doubt it. I doubt it would bring in enough money to keep GR going either (GR isn't always tightly focused - I saw an advert for Loans, well MicroFinance but it is the same thing).

I would like to be specific about my editions - but since I typically add my books at work rather than at home, I'm usually carrying a library copy of the book while my first print/edition is sitting safely at home. So I don't always have the ISBN number handy. Best I manage to do is tag "First print" and/or "signed."

You can always tag it "follow-up" or something like that, so you can quickly find the ones you want to fine tume when you have the book in hand; I use "stub" for incomplete records I want to improve (ganked from Wikipedia).

That's a good idea! As is, I suppose I'll have to spend a few hours going through once I unpack and shelve all my books. Note unrelated to the rest of the thread but not to this posting: I finally tracked down a barrister bookcase I could afford and I'll be picking it up this weekend!

Yay! Barrister bookcases are so excellent!

>175 No tags? No use of sources other than Amazon? No way to find people with similar libraries? Why are we even talking about it as though it's the same kind of thing as LT?

Goodreads has tag they call them shelves and they are very unwieldy. After 20 "shelves" it would be hard to arrange and handle anymore.

Many sources other than Amazon. Which you can add or change priority.

No easy or direct way to find people with similar libraries. They have a friends and follower system.

They have a book lists and voting system. Lists like "Best Vampire Book", "Worst Books of All Time", "Best Book of the 20th Century" etc. User can then vote and comment for book in the lists.

Goodreads has a trivia system where user submit book trivia questions. Then user answer questions and are tracked.

There is a popular video section. Video's of JK Rowling, Neil Giaman, Steve King, Jodi Picoult. Users vote on their favorites.

There is a popular quotes area. Where users can upload and vote on quotes.

There is a user writing section. User upload stories and poetry they have written. And yes other user vote on it.

There is an events section, book swapping.

It has a very different feel and look than LT. There are Ads, I hardly noticed them. No worse than yahoo, hotmail or goggle words.

One of the most telling difference is the actual catalog of yours books. In Goodreads there are only 7 way to see your book catalog. Each of the 7 is pre-configured and not really very different from each other.

I would best sum up the difference this way. Goodreads is like a Barnes&Noble with a Starbucks. Lots of people go there to meet, drink coffee, talk and "Hey look there are books here too!"

Librarything is like, well an library...

183>

Friends aren't similar libraries -- it's a person-to-person connection, not a library-to-library connection. I'm interested in finding people based on their books, not on seeing what books people I already know have.

Similar libraries is one of LT's strongest features. Take note booksellers: I know that for me - and I expect for most others here - it is the single strongest driver of most of my book purchases. And my book buying, already steady, has skyrocketed since LT. I hope when I click through and wishlist and, eventually, buy a book, LT gets some financial credit.

183: Thanks, that's a good and helpful description, and makes it clear to me why I prefer LibraryThing, hands down. (I poked my nose into Goodreads once, was severely unimpressed, and never bothered to go back.) I'm here for cataloging (as accurately as possible -- yes, editions are important to me!), a little book promotion (I admit it), a little occasional socializing, and a great deal of "Ooh! Another neat book in my field -- gotta buy that one too!!!" ;-) I like the graphics-light, information-heavy nature of LibraryThing. I like seeing the similar libraries (more "ooh! gotta buy that, too!!"). I'm not interested in lists, or games, or friending, or voting on stuff. I'm here for BOOKS!!!

After 186 messages I'm not sure if this has been mentioned or not. GoodReads does offer some review books. For some book people that is one reason to have an account there.

FYI for the lets have ads for non-payers, how would it hurt the rest of us.

The persistent error on GR that they were calling a browser problem, they are now calling an ad problem. One of the ads is trying to do something with JS (Java ?) and its not allowed. So it is creating this error, but there are so many ads they can't find the offending one.

#187 Your excactly right I've won more books over there than I have here.
Oh wait I've won none here LOL Hint Hint Abby!!

189> Very subtle. ;)

I think this thread is relevant for the discussion of more prominent search bars and the treatment of users concerned more with reading than with ownership.

Good grief that was a lot of text to read through.

I use both LT and GR for different reasons. I use LT for cataloguing and GR for book discussion. I found the LT community somewhat lacking because of the navigation, otherwise I would be over here permanently.

I read a lot but didn't want to add books I didn't own just so I could review them.

Can you describe particular ways in which navigation at LT is lacking?

Also, there is no requirement that you own a book before adding it to LT; check out the Read but Unowned collection.

Read But Unowned, is just a title. You still have to add the book. If you don't want to mix owned and unowned, or just don't want to bother adding it in the first place, it really doesn't help.

Yet is it such a bother to add the book if you're going to add a review to it anyway. And you don't have to mix the owned and unowned books if you don't put them in both the Read but Unowned and Your Library collections (unless you get hung up by the All Collections non-collection).

All Collections is a collection and it lists all books, thereby negating the value of being able to separate them.

I guess for some it is a bother, or s/he wouldn't have listed it.

But Tim has stated that All Collections is not a collection; it's just a way to see all the books that you have cataloged. Tim doesn't seem inclined to change his mind so if you want to avoid cognitive dissonance it behooves you to change yours.

I think it would cause less confusion in whether or not it is an actual collection if "All Collections" wasn't listed under the Collections heading on the profile.

>198 Yeah, but Tim is just playing with semantics. It doesn't matter whether he calls it a collection or not; the effect is the same.

Also, the fact that he's being unreasonably stubborn doesn't mean everyone should agree with him.

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 12:56pm.

It is Tim who has Cognitive Dissonance, not me.

So no I won't change my view. No matter how many times someone says the moon is made of green cheese, it does not make it so.

All Collections is a Collection and will be until it is renamed, moved from the collections area, and you can hide it or opt out of it.

Even though I don't expect Tim to change, I have no intention of doing so either.

I don't get this, really I don't. I wonder if there's something profound in the English language which -- not being my native tongue -- prevents me to understand this row about All Collections...

To me, from the first moment I landed here and started catalogueing my books, it was clear that All Collections was just what it claimed to be: list of books in all collections! It shows all collections in one view.

What am I not getting here? What is the problem?

It may be a listing of all books in one view, but it is a collection itself. The way collections work is that you can not only add new ones, but decide not to use some, thus making them inactive. You can't make All Collections inactive, so it violates the rules of collections. Tim came up with a semantic work around by saying it wasn't really a collection.

Tim feels that there should be some way to see all your books regardless of what collection(s) they are in, a collection-less view you might say. He thought that the easiest way to get to such a view was to add the All Collections option to the collections drop-down. However, by doing so he made the error of mixing different kinds of things into one list. I suggested to him a long time ago that just putting a line between All Collections and the collections would solve a lot of the confusion, but he hasn't seen fit to listen to my advice.

And for this, he apparently deserved to be boiled in glue, with a bookmark stuck in his heart.

>202 The whole point of Collections (as opposed to tags) was that it would let us separate out different groups of our books so that, for example, people who didn't want to list their owned/read books together with their wishlist books wouldn't have to have them together. This was considered a valid viewpoint at the time, enough to merit literally years of development time.

There are some of us who took this promise of separation more seriously than others, and actually don't want our different collections to be combined together (which, again, was the whole point of collections. For sets of books that I might want to see together, I use tags).

So, we want to be able to disable this All Collections thing, in the same way that we can disable any other default collection that we don't want. It's a set of books that appears prominently on our profiles under Collections, so whether you call it a collection or not is pretty irrelevant here.

The situation is more frustrating because Tim refuses to listen out of sheer stubbornness. It's an easy request from a technical standpoint (especially considering that Collections was a major, much-anticipated feature that was years in development), but he always falls back on the semantics game ("That's not a collection"--thanks, we don't care what you call it, we just want to be able to get rid of it) or ridiculous hyperbole ("Letting you hide that one set of books would cripple the site!"). Much animosity all around. Still, I like to think that Tim will yield to reason eventually, so the argument keeps coming up.

Tim feels that there should be some way to see all your books regardless of what collection(s) they are in, a collection-less view you might say.

This is the stupidest part of his whole argument. He's not going to see all of my books together regardless; all he's accomplished is preventing me from using the Wishlist collection at all. Big win for the site, hmm?

I initially balked at putting my wishlist on LT. The worst part of it, I think, is that it makes my entire book collection appear too large (for me). My goal had been to reduce the number of books in my collection. Now that will never happen, at least on LT. :(

ETA: Looking at Compete, it appears that GR is growing while LT is declining.

Is it my imagination or has GR been copying many of the successful features that LT has originated?

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 4:40pm.

I'm not sure the Collection issue will drive anyone to GoodReads, though. They also show you a grand total of all books you have flagged in some fashion, read, owned, or otherwise.

I use both sites and have no interest in adding anything to my LT account that I don't actually own (I use GR for those, read and otherwise), but changing categories and wording won't change my mind. There's a wide range of reasons and motivations for user libraries.

Looking at this graph, it appears that GR is growing while LT is declining.

Is it my imagination or has GR been copying many of the successful features that LT has originated?

I had been worried by graphs like that too, but then Tim made a point about how it wasn't as bad as it seemed after considering different countries, or something. I can't remember the details.

I think GR's tendency to copy successful features from other sites, paired with LT's absolute refusal to do that (supported by member comments about not wanting to "turn LT into GR") is exactly the problem here.

I posted an RSI thread maybe a year ago suggesting that LT should focus on becoming the best site out there, by making sure they were at least as good as their competitors in all aspects. LT is already so far superior in cataloguing, and it wouldn't take much to catch up in other regards. This idea was immediately shot down: "We don't want LT to be the best overall. We just want even more improvements in the area where it's already best."

I'm not sure the Collection issue will drive anyone to GoodReads, though.

No, that was just a side issue. I can't remember how it got in here. I'm certainly not going to leave for GR in protest just because I can't maintain a wishlist here in the way I'd like (though I do admit that there have been other issues that tempted me to move over to GR).

How many of those losses are "Spam" People' /Groups? I use both I have fun on the lists over at GR but I like LT just the way it is.I'd rather have the two different sites than the two combined (same features).The big difference I see is GR has more authors or more bestselling authors. LT's Authors seem to be more obscure.

>211 I think the spam people are more about policies than about features, and I'm not suggesting that LT should change in that regard. Something like Lists, though, would just be a net gain for LT.

I was refering to the graph where it said LT had 11% losses.I'd be curious on the raw data on why those 11% left LT.Were they banned because they were spammers??Did they move their collection to GR?..I'm definetly not hating on anyone I enjoy both sites for different reasons.

I'd be curious on the raw data on why those 11% left LT

Well, has anyone reading this thread basically left LT for greener pastures elsewhre (in this scenario, obviously meaning spending more time on other comparable book sites) than LT? If so, why?

In addition, what do people who use both GR and LT find they like better on GR than on LT?

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 3:54pm.

>210

how it wasn't as bad as it seemed after considering different countries, or something

Well, even if the users of LT are far larger due to the number of international users not being reflected on these stats, why is the number of unique users on LT going down relative to GR? Bad stats or are there other reasons?

>214 I'll see if I can get my sister to respond to this post. I don't think she's entirely transitioned over to GR because it is lacking in a lot of respects, but she's definitely made the attempt and is using LT a lot less. Mostly because of the user attitudes that are often represented here: elitism and plenty of general nastiness. I don't know that there are any improvements LT can make to fix that, though.

>215 I rescind my earlier point about it not being as bad as it seemed. Tim had posted that same graph earlier, but at a time when LT was actually keeping pace. The sudden drop probably is cause for concern.

I see very little nastiness on this site. There are, of course, a couple exceptions, but certainly not general.

I keep going over to GR to see what the fuss is - and I don't get it. It seems really shallow.

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 4:28pm.

elitism and plenty of general nastiness.

The "general" nastiness I don't see that often, although the accusation of "elitism" I can see a bit more.

LT can be a bit intimidating at times, I believe. A person can either just jump in and learn to be a part of it or retreat to calmer, simpler waters, I'm thinking.

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 4:34pm.

>218

It seems really shallow.

That's exactly what many people want for a book site. By that, I don't mean "simple" but rather a site about books that makes for quick, fun interactions with others based on books and reading. Nothing too "heavy". If that seems like a plug for GR, it's not. There's no website I like better than LT, but I worry about it.

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 4:34pm.

>214 In addition, what do people who use both GR and LT find they like better on GR than on LT?

Some aspects of the GR layout are much easier on my eyes. That's really a very personal thing and can't be called better/worse. Also, the work details that I most look at tend to appear on the same page over there and nicely grouped together over there, which is also not something you can call universally better/worse because we all care about different details.

The big advantage is probably the fact there are just more reviews per book. Or at least of the books that I read.

Ironically, considering 214 above, I find more elitism/nastiness over there than here. Or did. I haven't looked at their version of Talk for many months because of that. And maybe that's not an entirely fair description. I have less of a comfort level with censorship than their most talkative, influential members. Or maybe just a different definition of it, as a librarian.

Edit: There really isn't much actual interaction over there either. With the annual book challenges, for example, people list what they read but no one ever has anything to say to each other about them besides asking very suspiciously how someone is able to read so many so quickly.

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 4:37pm.

>218, 219 Maybe you're right, and "general" nastiness isn't the right word. It was more an issue of specific nastiness, directed at her personally, and continuing in discussion about her even outside of the thread where it had originated. Reading a lot of the things people say to me certainly doesn't encourage her either, though.

Elitism, though, even I see as a problem. It's been quashed to a certain extent lately, after Tim came right out and said that Twilight discussion was allowed and flagging for bad grammar wasn't, but I'm not convinced that it's entirely gone away.

By the way, I also checked Alexa.

>22

Reading a lot of the things people say to me certainly doesn't encourage her either, though.

:(

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 4:43pm.

It seems really shallow.

That's exactly what many people want for a book site. By that, I don't mean "simple" but rather a site about books that makes for quick, fun interactions with others based on books and reading.

I really think there should be a way for LT to allow more quick, fun interactions with others based on books and reading without sacrificing any of its depth.

Returning yet again to the points I made earlier, a good starting point would be a search box in the header of every page and the ability to add generic editions straight from the green plus.

I'm feeling really uncomfortable, all of a sudden. I don't like the thought of elitism,
and I hate the idea that I must be guilty, but apparently I am.

I would never flag someone for spelling or grammar, and I would never try to ban Twilight. But I can honestly say I don't like bad spelling and grammar, and I have certainly said at least a word or two about my dislike for Bella's role modeling.

I try to keep my opinions to safe threads (Old Fogeys and Curmudgeons, for example). But I do wish sometimes that people (especially our younger members) would present themselves as intelligently as they really are.

But I do wish sometimes that people (especially our younger members) would present themselves as intelligently as they really are.

...and here, precisely, is the dichotomy between LT and GR. I chose LT over GR for the level of intelligent conversation, the good spelling, and grammar, etc. At some point, each person will decide for himself on which site he feels most comfortable.

Do we want to water down LT to get more members? I think not. Are there other ways to make LT more accessible to those who now choose GR over LT now without sacrificing quality? Perhaps. I'm sure that Tim & Co. work on and think about this issue every day, but what can we, as devoted LT members, do to make this happen?

>226 I'm sorry; it wasn't my intention to make you feel uncomfortable or accuse you of guilt in anything.

>226

I have certainly said at least a word or two about my dislike...

The problem with this approach is that, on a forum, it may be seen as hostility by all who read it. Therefore, negative responses to one poor quality post not only alienates the person who made the post but may also alienate other *quiet/unseen* readers.

I often feel this same hostility to authors who try to promote on LT. In lieu of *private* messages to these authors (and I don't deny they spam) explaining LT policy and author options, many of their posts are given a "scolding" or are immediately flagged out of existence. Yes, the authors may be doing something wrong, but other *uninvolved* readers see this and absorb negativity. These are readers who don't post on fora, but simply read them. They are not known on LT so they can simply move to another website. Tim, at one point, tried to address this issue by requesting "first do no harm".

Personally, I don't know how to deal with inane posts other than red x them out. I do not engage with posts in which I have no interest.

I chose LT over GR for the level of intelligent conversation, the good spelling, and grammar, etc. At some point, each person will decide for himself on which site he feels most comfortable.

Do we want to water down LT to get more members? I think not. Are there other ways to make LT more accessible to those who now choose GR over LT now without sacrificing quality? Perhaps. I'm sure that Tim & Co. work on and think about this issue every day, but what can we, as devoted LT members, do to make this happen?

Great post (worth copying in its entirety!). I do wonder about how to make LT more successful without sacrificing quality.

I think one of the keys to a good experience is finding the right groups, and maybe this is something that can be improved. Group search is terrible, for one thing. It seems that a lot of new users go first to Book Talk, which (in my opinion) has one of the lowest levels of conversation around. I like the idea that's been proposed in the past of having a group devoted to welcoming newbies, which could be listed even above Book Talk. LT is pretty complicated and the help system isn't always the best, so it would be good to have a friendly place to figure out where to get started. I know plenty of established members would be happy to help out there.

Then, there's the issue of how to find out about LT in the first place. One of the most obvious ways to promote a website is through Facebook, and LT's Facebook interaction is pretty limited. There have been concerns that bringing in the "Facebook crowd" would lower the level of LT, but there are plenty of intelligent people on Facebook too. I didn't notice any decrease in the conversation level after the feature for publishing reviews to Facebook, so I think more of this sort of integration would be a good thing.

Then, there are the plain old fun features that people like, that might draw people to LT. Lists have been mentioned before as one of the best things about GR, and I don't see how they would detract from LT. I think in many cases it's the initial experience that turns people off LT, because it's not quite as streamlined as you might like and it's not clear where to start when you haven't entered any books and are facing a massive group list. I don't use GR enough to have friends there and I don't follow the groups, but the lists always appeal even when I have no other engagement with the site.

I do like the idea of a newbie guidance group. And the lists are ok. And I know Group is on the list for cleanup, and it needs it.

All Collections is a collection and it lists all books, thereby negating the value of being able to separate them.

I'm confused as to why having a collection that aggregates all collections makes it impossible to use other collections to seperate them.

>229

I agree that complaining about punctuation, etc is the sort of negative that is rather unnecessary and can turn people away. But the example you quote of expressing dislike for the behavior of a character in a book seems entirely appropriate. And certainly no poster will be able to avoid that sort of viewpoint, on the internet or even in real life.

I wish there was an output option that would print a page of 'card catalog looking' records of say 6 or 8 books. It would have a thumbnail image on each one. I could specify which books I wanted to print. I would use card stock that tears into index cards. I think I saw some.

It says right at the beginning of this site that everyone is a librarian and we can catalog our books and so I think people may wonder, well what does a catalog look like? Whose do they choose to view? Are there any pointers letting people know whose catalog is the coolest, or the driest, or the most modern, or ...?

Mainly when I am looking at a site for the very first time trying to decide whether to sign up, I keep looking around trying to find what I get if I do.

Obviously, if I see more than a few snotty posts in a thread I'm only likely to stay if I like that.

(maybe that's why we are all here.)

edit booboo

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 6:41pm.

>233

But the example you quote of expressing dislike for the behavior of a character in a book seems entirely appropriate.

???

If I expressed that at all, I'm entirely unaware of it!

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 6:32pm.

>235 The full quote from 226 is I have certainly said at least a word or two about my dislike for Bella's role modeling.

And I think that refers much more to the book than to the reviewer. She did have earlier comments about disliking poor grammar in that post, however, so maybe it's just an issue of pasting an ambiguous piece of it.

>234

Getting off-topic, this is fun: http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/

A shame there doesn't seem to be a visual example, but it even adds hand-written margin comments.

I'm confused as to why having a collection that aggregates all collections makes it impossible to use other collections to seperate them.

If you're forced to keep them all together somewhere, they're not separate.

Why don't you ask about the reasoning behind collections in the first place? I'm perfectly happy including both owned and read but unowned books together in my Library, distinguished by tags. This was entirely unacceptable to some people, for whatever reason. Their arbitrary preference was worth spending two years meeting. My arbitrary preference was considered so ridiculous that a special exception had to be made to prevent it from being met. I just don't see the logic behind this decision.

237, I've seen that before! That is quite geeky. Couldn't we have something like that here, that would be connected to our books? It might draw more geeks!

>236

My mistake. I guess I didn't fully understand what I quoted and took the meaning of the statement out of context by quoting only a small part. I agree with you that a dislike of the behavior of a character *is* appropriate on a forum.

What I intended to say is that sometimes I see cynical retorts to posts with bad grammar or punctutation. That smacks of an elitist attitude for whatever reason it's posted. I red x these out. Others feel the need to denigrate the original poster directly on the forum. Whether or not these are youngsters, to me, makes no difference. A private message and a red x should be sufficient.

238: I still don't get it. So there is one collection that has all the books together. There's a half dozen others (plus the option to create as many as you like) to keep them seperate. I don't see how this keeps you from keeping your LT books seperate. Its just a database to manipulate. Its not like the books are going to get contaminated sitting next to one another or something.

>242 It keeps me from presenting my library to other people in the way I want it to be presented. I don't want the casual observer to make no distinction between the books I actually own/read and the books that I noted down because they looked vaguely interesting at some point. It would cause my public face on LT to present a misleading picture of me.

Sometimes the point is made that it's more important how other people want to see my library than how I want to present it. But interestingly, no one would have a problem with it if I wanted to keep a whole section of my library (or the whole thing, for that matter) private. This is even promised repeatedly as an upcoming improvement for the future. But allowing people to see my books only in the discrete groupings that have meaning to me--shocking! Unacceptable! I just don't get it.

242: Well, you can, just use the various other collections for that. I don't see what the problem is that all the various discrete collections are combined into one that clearly labels itself as such. I don't see how this will cause confusion given that the other (default) collections make pretty clear what books you own, and what ones you don't and so on.

243: No, you don't, but Zoe does. I know some members agree with her.

I care more about how I see _my_ library, aka I want purple checkmarks.

I don't see what the problem is that all the various discrete collections are combined into one that clearly labels itself as such.

The separate collections aren't actually separate anymore.

I don't see how this will cause confusion given that the other (default) collections make pretty clear what books you own, and what ones you don't and so on.

Only for those who bother to display a Collections column when looking at All Books. I certainly don't always do that when looking at other people's catalogues.

>244 I'll take purple checkmarks too :)

I always tried to be gentle when I mentioned spelling errors or bad grammar. But it didn't matter. I've given up trying to get people to take pride in their posts. I'm the bad guy if I try. So I don't.

246: And a stable for your ponies? :)

247: Writing and words aren't as important to everyone. Unfortunately.

Yes maybe the casual user who's got reading comprehension or attention problems, but the reasonably alert user has no problem understanding what READ NOT OWNED means. Oy vey.

>>I don't see what the problem is that all the various discrete collections are combined into one that clearly labels itself as such.

>The separate collections aren't actually separate anymore.

The real lack of separation is the fact that so many LT functions (stats, clouds, shared books, etc) work only on the "All Collections" set. As such, it would be strange and perhaps misleading not to display this set in the list of collections. (e.g. I only have "Your Library" and "Wishlist." I deleted "All Collections." Why do my stats keep counting my wishlist books?)

245> I don't know Zoe. When I look at your profile it shows me all your collections (including All Collections) and I can choose to look at any of them. So if someone is looking at All Collections then they deliberately choose not to look at the other ones and they should know what they are getting. Is there another way to get to your library that just dumps you into the All Collections view?

I've given up trying to get people to take pride in their posts.

I think this is something that has to come from the individual; no amount of being told by someone else will make a difference. If they stay on the site, they'll eventually notice that all their posts stick out in a bad way and that people have more trouble than they should in understanding what they say. At that point, I hope that a change will come naturally.

And a stable for your ponies? :)

Nah, Purple Checkmarks is your pony and can stay in your stable ;)

Yes maybe the casual user who's got reading comprehension or attention problems, but the reasonably alert user has no problem understanding what READ NOT OWNED means. Oy vey.

I didn't realize that the reasonably alert user was psychic too, so that merely by knowing that I have some unowned books they'll be able to pick them out from the crowd.

The real lack of separation is the fact that so many LT functions (stats, clouds, shared books, etc) work only on the "All Collections" set. As such, it would be strange and perhaps misleading not to display this set in the list of collections. (e.g. I only have "Your Library" and "Wishlist." I deleted "All Collections." Why do my stats keep counting my wishlist books?)

Yeah, I hope this will be addressed at some point.

When I look at your profile it shows me all your collections (including All Collections) and I can choose to look at any of them. So if someone is looking at All Collections then they deliberately choose not to look at the other ones and they should know what they are getting.

Yeah, I know they're getting the "I don't care" view. It doesn't make a difference to them whether I own or have read a book, or whether it's just something I came across once and happened to note down for future reference. The thing is, it matters to me. I don't want to present this random jumble as an option.

Zoe: concerning the spelling, et.al.: You're right, of course. I need to remember I'm retired. Teaching the next generation is no longer my life.

Ok, so I'll chime in from the tangent much earlier in the thread (these threads move so fast, this was from just a few hours ago!):

"But I do wish sometimes that people (especially our younger members) would present themselves as intelligently as they really are."

That only works if people will look beyond your age. There's no point in writing a greatly expressed thought on these boards just to have people say: ‘You are younger than me. Ergo, your opinion should be treated as less worthy than mine.’ If this attitude crops up even towards people in their twenties, what hope do I have of having my opinion counted for anything if I’m in my teens? There’s no point in attempting to ‘take pride in’ my posts' grammar if others would denigrate them for something outside of that post.

It’s not that I don’t still look at LT ever (clearly I do :P), but I’m certainly not going to recommend it to my friends -- I would point them towards GoodReads. It may have less depth in conversation, but what depth it does have is real and not a show of being better than others. I haven’t been reading much here recently so I don’t know how much has changed in attitude, it could well have improved, but from the non-random sampling I’ve been lurking the attitude hasn’t left entirely, that’s for sure. (This is in no way directed at people in this thread at all!)

Overall, I figure GR succeeds by being nice and having the appearance of being open and easy to use (in contrast, LT has a lot of good data, but sometimes it is displayed so prominently as to overwhelm, like on the home page). This encourages people to recruit their friends there. And then, no matter what the real pros/cons of a site, people go where their friends and family are. In fact, that’s the only thing keeping me checking in on LT really.

It's not even that I want to retreat to 'calmer waters'. As a debater, I love to argue! But there's no use arguing against people who I perceive would not listen to me because I'm a teen. So in fact I retreat from LT to the rather questionably calmer grounds of a Canadian Intercollegiate Debating forum, lol. I can get my internet depth from there and use GR for the book-related stuff. I still read the Read YA lit and Name that Book threads here, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect at least main groups/discussions about the site to also be rational/non-elite.

It's not what GR has that draws me, its more like the anti-LT in my mind, and I view using it as almost a protest vote.

The only time I move on from the younger members is when all they write is the "whazzup" kind of postings. And there are times that the conversation is about books I'm not interested in.

But I really don't ever recall someone being dissed because of their youth. (Well, ok, the 20th gush-post about Twilight probably got shot down.) But we have lots of smart funny "youngsters" around here, and if! they are willing to carry on conversations with old fogeys I'll talk all night

That post makes me wish that Tim had implemented a feature to search for all of a users posts so that I can see what people have said to you to make you say that. Could you tell us what groups have treated you so rudely?

>255

Thanks, Kira, for being so forthright on this forum as to what attracts you more to Goodreads. Sadly, and to LT's detriment, I've heard a similar gripe from too many people.

> 202

You're not missing a thing. "All collections" means exactly that. If some people don't get that, that's their problem.

>259 I understand it, I just don't want it.

Do you not understand the words "Spoiler marking" or "Spoiler flag"? Does the fact that you understand them mean that it would be okay if Tim added them to your reviews?

I just saw this thread, so am replying to the OP, although I have read the whole thing.

I went over to GoodReads and tried to upload my books as exported from LT. I have 5,500+ books here on LT, and GR only uploaded 2559 and immediately marked them all as read. I decided never to use GR.

I did look around a little. I do like their FB app and their trivia quiz. That's it. LT far exceeds them in every other category.

Some things I agree with from up thread: LT should have a 'generic edition' or 'ebook edition'. I want this mostly for ebooks (because right now I do the 'click the first option after a search, and a little part of my catalog authenticity dies every time I do), although I'd be more tempted to use the 'wishlist' and 'read but unowned' collections if there was a generic. I also want the purple checkmarks. I think LT could do an awesome trivia quiz, too, but I'd prefer development time/resources be spent on other things.

To address "elitism:" I love that the average user here at LT is better educated, more intelligent, or at least better able to spell and punctuate, as well as formulate well-reasoned reviews. This is one of the few places I can go, IRL or online and feel like the people here are smarter than me. It's refreshing and edifying. If we were suddenly flooded by 'the masses' like when all those kids started spamming book talk a while ago, I would not be pleased. However, I wouldn't leave either. This is still the best book-cataloging site, bar none.

...the average user here at LT is better educated, more intelligent, or at least better able to spell and punctuate, as well as formulate well-reasoned reviews.

Not to mention more handsome, charming and thoughtful.

...tall, erudite, and sexually appealing...

. . . humble . . .

> 260

Are you Talvitar? Or did you not understand that ">202" means that my comment was a response to her, not to you.

>265 How rude. I was responding as part of the "some people" you referenced in your post. I didn't realize that the people you talk about aren't allowed to respond to your posts in a public forum.

266: I think pretty much everyone understands your position (even if we have come to the conclusion that it doesn't make much sense). Is it really necessary to reiterate it in response to every post?

Do you think there might be a message in the fact that the one person who seems to be so frequently misunderstood or insulted is you?

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 9:54pm.

I think pretty much everyone understands your position (even if we have come to the conclusion that it doesn't make much sense). Is it really necessary to reiterate it in response to every post?

You mean, every post where other people deliberately misrepresent it or make snide comments about it?

Do you think there might be a message in the fact that the one person who seems to be so frequently misunderstood or insulted is you?

Sure. It seems that a lot of people here need to fall back on insults or "misunderstanding" when faced with a strongly-argued position opposite from their own.

Sure. It seems that a lot of people here need to fall back on insults or "misunderstanding" when faced with a strongly-argued position opposite from their own.

Plenty of people on LT seem to be able to argue with people who hold strongly argued positions opposite their own without the constant misunderstanding and insults that you seem to have to endure. Do you ever wonder why that might be?

Most of this thread is rehashing other threads now (collections) rather than the original post, but I am puzzled by something.

How in the world do people know how old posters are? I've assumed some people treating forums incorrectly as chat rooms and specifically talking about English class are either in high school or college, but beyond that... I certainly know people in their 30s who use l33t gobbledygook online so I wouldn't assume anything there.

>269 Oh, the difficult decisions.... Do I "give in" now, and see whether you can answer your own question in a way that doesn't draw flags? Or should I be the worse person, and make the tempting remark that they must have had the good fortune not to cross your path?

To be honest, in my experience there are only a few regular posters who tend to drag down the discussion into "misunderstandings" and insults, at least in the groups I participate in--from some of the posts Tim has made in Site Talk in the past, I get the sense that greater controversies have arisen in groups that I don't follow. To be clear, since this arose in context of a snippy exchange here, I don't think lilithcat is one of these people.

The statistics aren't public, but I get a sense that I'm one of the more frequent posters in RSI and related threads. These threads particularly lend themselves to high feelings because the results of the discussions might actually make a difference. Can you give examples of some model LT users who debate their views about the site as strongly (and frequently) as I do without either giving or receiving insults? (I've added the "giving insults" part since I don't think someone deserves to be held up as a model of behaviour just because their opponents have better manners than they do. I trust that this won't have a significant impact on your argument.)

I'm curious to hear what your take on the issue is. I do think it's interesting that you seem to interpret "enduring insults" as reflecting badly on the person being insulted rather than the person doing the insulting.

>270 I say on my profile that I'm 24, which led to condescension from someone "wiser" just a couple of days ago.

pffft. Baby.

>272 Well that would do it. But I just looked at the profile of the poster upthread and her profile actually sounds like a college student, and of course those can be any age. Maybe it just comes up in the conversation sometimes.

>273 :D

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 11:33pm.

Compete

There are two realities to such graphs. First, they are very dubious numbers. No company can measure such statistics directly--we don't send them our data, and the nature of the internet precludes anyone from knowing about other people's data. Compete works by getting some internet service providers to provide them with statistical samples. These samples are biased in various ways (eg., few educational institutions would allow it). No doubt they try to account for that bias. But looking at our actual traffic graphs over time, I've seen many times that they've not matched the direction of our stats. They seem to over-represent changes in Google-search traffic and under-represent other traffic.

As for the magnitude of the stats, they are way, way off. According to our Google Analytics, we had "3,061,557 Absolute Unique Visitors"--more than three times their estimate. In general, however, I think they show trends and maybe relative numbers in roughly analogous situations. But it's not a good idea to get hung up on either numbers of short-term directions.

More importantly, for both LT and GR, the largest factor is un-signed in users. Think about it. Did LibraryThing really have 950,000 signed-in visitors last month, let along 3 million?! If we did, we'd be bigger than Lady Gaga! No, by far the majority of our traffic is from Google, and is very close to worthless. The traffic comes because LT has the highest-ranked page for a given book someone is searching for. GR is no doubt the same. We can only "capture" maybe a percent of those people to become members. The majority arrive, find out what they want to know, immediately jump off to some other site to buy the book, or leave wondering what the heck they stumbled upon.

So, the majority of our traffic is determined by Google's opinion of the site--what's known as the "Google Dance." Every 2-3 months this gets reevaluated, and it goes up and down. We've found ourselves swimming in traffic before, and we've gone down before. This time around we lost some traction. I'm going to move forward my plans to do some "Search Engine Optimization" and, with luck, that'll get figured into the next Google Dance.

While declines of this sort are cause for concern long-term, LibraryThing's actual growth and meaningful use is primarily driven by much smaller streams--personal recommendations, driect links, blog posts, blog widgets, etc.

More generally

I look forward to the day--not long off now, I think--when the venture capitalists that have funded Goodreads so generously (they've received at least 4x our funding) want to make good on their investment. The clock is ticking on them--investors in such companies are looking to flip, not to build a "real" company. I have no doubt the company will sell well. I suspect it will go to Amazon and if not them to one of maybe two or three other big players.

I look forward to this day because VC-funded companies are dangerous when they have cash, and become lazy, stupid and meek once they've bought and everyone cashes out or, if requried to stay on a while, checks out mentally.

We are not standing still. But we are also trying to make LibraryThing into a successful long-term business. By charging, by selling to libraries and a number of other efforts, we have a very considerable revenue base, and it is growing very healthily. By contrast, having tested ads, I am sure Goodreads' ad revenues aren't paying for more than one or two of their people. This financial position gives me a lot of cause for optimism. I took a different path with LibraryThing--we never took VC money, I still have the absolute ability to prevent a sale, and I have decided not to sell--not for a long, long time. We're going to be around for a long time, and with more and more resources to improve the site.

The situation is more frustrating because Tim refuses to listen out of sheer stubbornness.

No, out of sheer disagreement. I do not agree with those who think LibraryThing would be better if we not only allowed people to divide their books into collections—as now—but also made it impossible for them to see their books outside of these collections—as requested.

If you don't like being able to see, to search or to do anything else (ie., tag, power edit) across collections, grit your teeth and pretend the option does not exist. I can assure you, the damage you suffer will be temporary.

As for Goodreads and collections, Goodreads has no such concept. They have tags, which they call shelves and make hard to edit like a tag. They do not give you more features, or more separation, than either tags or collections. Indeed, they give you less.

>270 I say on my profile that I'm 24, which led to condescension from someone "wiser" just a couple of days ago.

I think your wisdom is pretty obvious--however wrong even the wisest person can be. I suggest you reply that they're probably going to die first. I, however, plan to outlive you!

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 12:14am.

#274, Well in the somewhat distant past of LT I took a strong stance on the issue of ageism which made obvious my deep dark secret of being a mere teenager... that and talk about recent high school reading lists and such, which would be the more normal part of conversation :)

Tim, in message 238 Zoe said, "My arbitrary preference was considered so ridiculous that a special exception had to be made to prevent it from being met."

Could you please clarify whether the design of collections was based on Zoe's preferences or not?

I use both GR and LT.

I like LT for the ease of entering books. I think the graphics are better here. I really like the statistics (memes) here. I also like the fact we have member connections on our profile page. That aspect is not as easily to discern on GR.

I started my GR account before collections and I could enter the hundreds of books I want to read and clutter it up with where they are in my house. I did not want that on my LT account (box-3).

I belong to two wonderful groups at Goodreads that I wish were at LT. Maybe the difference is the social networking.

Could you please clarify whether the design of collections was based on Zoe's preferences or not?

I don't even know what's being talked about. I've made it clear I think Zoe is frequently on-base, and, when off, can be a catalyst for good changes. But the request for enforced, mandatory, feature-depriving separation of collections is not something I'm warming up to.

--> 276

I have decided not to sell--not for a long, long time. We're going to be around for a long time, and with more and more resources to improve the site.

Those are reassuring words. Every now and then, I just have to read them. Thanks for the input, Tim.

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 12:06am.

>276 See, Squeaky, I knew Tim had some convincing argument about why those graphs didn't matter :)

While declines of this sort are cause for concern long-term, LibraryThing's actual growth and meaningful use is primarily driven by much smaller streams--personal recommendations, driect links, blog posts, blog widgets, etc.

I still think you're missing out on a lot of this growth because of your very limited Facebook integration. I'm not talking about random FB users, but the people who might actually bother going to an external website about books because friends whose judgment about books they respected kept using it.

No, out of sheer disagreement. I do not agree with those who think LibraryThing would be better if we not only allowed people to divide their books into collections—as now—but also made it impossible for them to see their books outside of these collections—as requested.

I'm not actually sure that you understand what I'm requesting, despite the number of times we've discussed this issue. I'm not saying that it should be impossible for people to see their books all together. I'm not saying that All Collections should be eliminated entirely. I just think there should be an option to disable it, like we have for every other collections-related set of books.

Also, let me point out that the people who would disable All Collections would tend not to be the ones who have 50 million collections--no one would choose to cripple navigation of their books in any meaningful way. I personally have only five collections, two of which are subsets of my Library.

I don't even know what's being talked about.

I mean the frequent claims that All Books, while it looks and acts like a collection in most respects, isn't *technically* considered a collection and therefore can't be disabled. A specific exception has been made in this case, with the result that I can't accomplish what I'd like even though the ability to do so would normally be expected. I don't actually think that this was done to spite me, just that what I'd like to do is in line with how the feature would be expected to work if an exception hadn't been made.

I suggest you reply that they're probably going to die first.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind :). (I'm tempted to leave him a profile comment right now, but I suppose I'll refrain from stirring up the old controversy.)

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 12:26am.

I'm not actually sure that you understand what I'm requesting, despite the number of times we've discussed this issue.

Once again, it is Zoe who is misunderstood. It isn't that her argument has been understood and rejected, it is the rest of us who are too dumb to figure it out.

I mean the frequent claims that All Books, while it looks and acts like a collection in most respects, isn't *technically* considered a collection and therefore can't be disabled.

I think its more than not "isn't *technically* considered a collection" but "isn't technically a collection". Meaning that collections are a filter on the set of books and All Collections is the lack of a filter. So not being able to disable All Collections is a consequence of how it is not a special exemption but a consequence of how it is implemented. I don't know how hard it would be to implement disabling All Collections but it wouldn't be as simple as just removing a special exemption.

> 276

LibraryThing's actual growth and meaningful use is primarily driven by much smaller streams--personal recommendations, driect links, blog posts, blog widgets, etc.

Which is why, on my book-reviewing blog, I began to link each book title to the Book page here on LT.

I still think you're missing out on a lot of this growth because of your very limited Facebook integration.

Yeah, I agree. Mike is currently working through a complete redo of the connections code, including the friends code and using the new Facebook Connect structure. That's a first step to putting LT on FB in a deeper way. At least you'll be able to integrate your social graph.

We have to make choices, though. I am torn what to think of sinking effort into book-swapping, for example (go see that thread, if you want), and more generally between the payoffs being more social and doing the cataloging part better. I think the answer is both, of course. But both isn't always a feasible choice with limited resources.

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 12:43am.

Once again, it is Zoe who is misunderstood. It isn't that her argument has been understood and rejected, it is the rest of us who are too dumb to figure it out.

I saw this exact position misunderstood by an intelligent user very recently. I know this because she had the courtesy to acknowledge that she had misunderstood (and, incidentally, she no longer opposed the request after that).

On a more interesting note, I'm still waiting to hear your theories about why I'm the only one who's so misunderstood and insulted.

>284 I guess you're right that there's a blurring of what's going on behind the scenes and what the user experiences. From an end-user perspective, it looks and acts a collection and should therefore behave like a collection as much as possible. Even if it really is different in some fundamental way, there are still ways it could be partially disabled that would go a long way toward addressing user concerns. I just don't believe that it would be difficult to remove that link from my profile, for one.

On a more interesting note, I'm still waiting to hear your theories about why I'm the only one who's so misunderstood and insulted.

Here's a news flash: I don't think you are. I think you interpret disagreement as misunderstanding and insults.

Can we not have this argument be about people? Surely no good will come of it.

I'm glad to hear that more FB integration is in the works.

I am torn what to think of sinking effort into book-swapping, for example (go see that thread, if you want), and more generally between the payoffs being more social and doing the cataloging part better.

If this is the book-swapping thread I'm thinking of, I'm almost 100% sure you'd be better off doing something that had a more direct connection to the site as a whole. I know it's more fun to develop something entirely new and exciting, but ultimately I think things like book-swapping would have a pretty negligible impact on people's general site usage. But then, I think even Local needs more integration with people's everyday use of the site ("Where I Bought This Book", maybe) to justify all the time that was spent on it.

payoffs being more social and doing the cataloging part better

Currently, I'd lean toward social for a few reasons:
1) Social features are where you currently have more competition from other sites. LT is already ridiculously far ahead of sites like GR or Shelfari in terms of cataloguing abilities
2) Social features seem more likely to draw in friends and relatives of current users than cataloguing features--all my friends who've shown even the slightest interest in cataloguing their books have been told about LT many times, with limited success. I somehow don't think that will change if I tell them that the cataloguing features are now even better.
3) The cataloguing changes that people want seem a lot more complicated--I figure if you could easily have dealt with Other Authors, you would have done it years ago. When you're dealing with something very complicated, there's less return on time spent.

(But returning to the previous discussion, could you at least acknowledge that you know I don't want to disable All Collections for everyone, only for myself?)

Get your hands off my collections!

But you said earlier that you were going to come into my library and delete my books! Fair is fair ;)

_Zoe_: it is possible to set up a "recommended" collection view for those who come to visit your library. I went and checked your library and noticed that you use that feature.
How about if you set up a recommended view which has "Collections" as one of the columns? That would sort of solve the problem that you don't want to present ALL the books in your various collections (e.g. wishlist-type of books) as owned/read.

Would this work for you? I have my collection view set like this -- mainly because even I don't always remember which books I have in my physical library and which books I've mainly borrowed and read :D

Thanks, Talvitar, that's the best suggestion I've heard so far. I'll think about it.

I get confused reading these discussions about All Collections too, and I'm not sure I understand quite what the issue is. _Zoe_ is it that it would it be ok if you were able to see all your books together (All Collections), but you want other people to be prevented from seeing your "All Collections," i.e. all your books together? Or is it that you don't want anyone else to see your "All Collections" and you don't want the option of seeing it yourself either?
(That either of these is different from making one or more collections private I think I understand; if I've understood that part correctly, it's not about shielding any of the books from public view, but more about how they're displayed to others - or to yourself? - all together, or only visible separately.)

@285 Thanks for doing this; I check out books first on LT, not amazon, and review blogs always link to Amazon.

Incidentally, this is also why I really don't understand why there's no direct box to search all of LT on the home page. Any given time I hit LT, it's much more likely to check out a book I don't have but want to find out more about, rather than to do something with a book already in my catalog. So the "search your library" box is next to useless and a "search LT" box would be what I'm going for almost all the time. This is such a small pony, really...

ETA @290:

I figure if you could easily have dealt with Other Authors, you would have done it years ago

Can I ask what "Other Authors" is referring to? I'm pretty much of a noob and don't really know which of the many brilliant ideas I have for this site are ones that have been flogged to death already (this may be one).

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 3:00am.

#296

On search that is probably down to different usage patterns. Except when doing some CK gardening I mostly search for books/authors that I own.

On Other Authors.

When you edit a book record you will see a space for Author and "Other Authors" - the Other Authors can be for collaborators, cover artists etc.

There are a couple of issues -
1) Old data (books entered before this feature was created) have both collaborators in the Author line. There is no conversion from old to new.
2) Other Authors do not link up to an author's page. So for example a book which has Larry Niven as the author and Jerry Pournelle as the Other Author wouldn't feature on Jerry Pournelle's page. This may require a few more changes - for example it would be great to know what role a person had on the book (for those who are multi-talented and have illustrated some things and written others).

@297 Well, yes, there are different usage patterns, but if this were a well-designed site, it would accommodate a variety of them. I can't conceive of any reason why there shouldn't be both a site-search and a your-library-search box on the home page, or at the very least a vastly-improved ability to customize the home page. The link for the site-search isn't even prominently displayed--and yes, every extra page-load is kind of an irritation, because this site is frequently sloooow. (And my internet is always slow, so when it's doubled up it's aarghhhhh.)

That's funny, because LibraryThing has the less serious, more lowbrow name. Judging just by that, you'd expect it to be the Facebook or MySpace for books, not goodreads. Well, more to the point, I think that while LibraryThing keeps steadily growing and getting better, goodreads in a few years will just be one of those sites you wonder what on earth happened to...

the request for enforced, mandatory, feature-depriving separation of collections is not something I'm warming up to

Thank you for clarifying - just from an organizational perspective, NOT having an umbrella-collection makes zero sense to me. Because I know that this does exist in the database and not being able to view collections all at once or compare entire universes to entire universes would be mind-numbingly insane.

It would be one of those things that would actually make me feel far less connected to other users - I would probably develop an instant dislike of anyone that had more than 3 collections (including myself!) as I had to keep selecting collections to browse. Of course, there would end up being the inevitable feature request for a "browse all collections at once" mode - which is exactly what we have now with All Collections.

The search page should almost never be slow to load (the search might be - but that would be the same if there was a box on the home page). I find the home page to be much slower (not surprisingly as it does much more) than the search page.

_Zoe_ is it that it would it be ok if you were able to see all your books together (All Collections), but you want other people to be prevented from seeing your "All Collections," i.e. all your books together? Or is it that you don't want anyone else to see your "All Collections" and you don't want the option of seeing it yourself either?

I don't want anyone else seeing it, and I'd rather not have it prominently displayed for myself either. I know there would always be ways for me to get at it (a de-activated collection could always be re-activated, after all), but it wouldn't show up on my profile or in the Collections drop-down or anywhere else where I'd have to acknowledge its existence on a regular basis.

(That either of these is different from making one or more collections private I think I understand; if I've understood that part correctly, it's not about shielding any of the books from public view, but more about how they're displayed to others - or to yourself? - all together, or only visible separately.)

Right. I'd be happy to have people see my Wishlist, as long as they know that's it's my Wishlist and not my "real" books.

Because I know that this does exist in the database and not being able to view collections all at once or compare entire universes to entire universes would be mind-numbingly insane.

It would be one of those things that would actually make me feel far less connected to other users - I would probably develop an instant dislike of anyone that had more than 3 collections (including myself!) as I had to keep selecting collections to browse. Of course, there would end up being the inevitable feature request for a "browse all collections at once" mode - which is exactly what we have now with All Collections.

I really don't understand the constant references to feature requests. I don't think people are generally idiotic enough that they can't distinguish between a feature that doesn't exist and a feature that's been turned off or hidden.

When people have private books, are you going to ask for a way to view all their books, public and private? Do you think this is a reasonable request that Tim would readily grant, just to avoiding the "mind-numbing insanity" of not being able to see all of someone else's books together?

Also, the existence of several disjoint collections is still a lot easier for the viewer than several separate accounts.

I do wonder whether there could be a way to distinguish "significant" collections (those that contain books not in the others) from "insignificant" collections (those, like CR in my case, that are just subsets of the Library). That would make it easier for people to deal with my overwhelming five collections.

On Search--I think site-wide search is more important than catalogue search for the page headers, because that's what gives new users an entryway into the site. They don't have books of their own to search yet.

>285,
Yes, I do the same thing. I have some affiliate links at the bottom of the review, but I always link in the title to the LT page.

I would probably develop an instant dislike of anyone that had more than 3 collections (including myself!) as I had to keep selecting collections to browse.

I should add, I'd also be happy with an automatic All-But-Wishlist collection, or some way to exclude Wishlist from the current All Collections, so that you'd only have to look in two places.

As of last night, GoodReads has one less user. I had to chuckle at the URL of their account deletion page. It contained the word destroy.

I just wanted to chime in to say that I, too, am extremely thrilled to hear that Facebook integration is still actively being worked on. I think that it ties directly into what Tim says in 276:

LibraryThing's actual growth and meaningful use is primarily driven by much smaller streams--personal recommendations, driect links, blog posts, blog widgets, etc.

Feeding the books I read, the reviews I write (which in fact I suspect I'd do more of if they were being actively exported to my friends), the ratings I give, etc straight into facebook is a steady and ongoing recommendation from me to the couple of hundred people who are my friends on Facebook. Most of these people will tune it out - but I have at least a dozen very bookish friends who likely won't.

And even those people who tune it out will have gained a brand awareness of LibraryThing, which I think is really worth something.

There are friends of mine who keep book journals in blogs and other ways - I've tried to tempt them to LT, but it's so hard for them to push stuff they do here to places where the people they know can actually read them. The more we can do to make this push easier, the more people, I think, we will attract.

Zoe says - Right. I'd be happy to have people see my Wishlist, as long as they know that's it's my Wishlist and not my "real" books.

If you put them in the collection labeled wishlist, I'm pretty sure I'd figure it out. ; )

When people have private books, are you going to ask for a way to view all their books, public and private? Do you think this is a reasonable request that Tim would readily grant, just to avoiding the "mind-numbing insanity" of not being able to see all of someone else's books together?


So do you just make up unrelated issues to throw out there so you can not address the real issues that aren't even addressed to you? PRIVACY =/= PUBLIC COLLECTION. Get it?

Wow. Look, your POV is understood. It is simply not agreed with because it isn't what the majority wanted. And keeping the majority happy actually keeps more users on the site (to follow the theme of the post). You can continue to vomit up post after post after post after post thinking that volume = possibility to persuade the majority, but after all these months, even you must suspect that this is a full-on windmill tilt?

Look, my post was to Tim and not to you - I realize you love to quote and respond as if everything is an opportunity to refute, but after calling Tim "stubborn" for making a design decision and accusing him of designing a feature against you when he simply designed a feature for the site - I figured I'd be a human being and express my gratitude. That you wanted to make it all about you instead speaks volumes.

Everyone in this thread has been part of an implementation where every detail they wanted did not go the way they wanted. We've also been big enough to use the feature as released and to have realized what's good about the change, what works and what could be effectively changed from a realistic perspective. What we don't do is post constantly about how our original idea was the only way to go and why the staff was stubborn, how they deliberately designed the system against our idea and how everyone that doesn't get our idea must not understand our point of view. We also don't post about how stupid everything about a feature is (i.e. the original collection names) for all the new users to read in RSI as part of our crusade.

Most of the time, we understand that implementations are a massive set of compromises - because everyone wants something different. That we get some of the features in the working order we have is amazing at all - that the LT staff in the last year hasn't decided to shut down the BETA group or take RSI down to e-mails is still amazing to me. I'd hate to see it fall to this because these issues do get so blown up. (And I realize that I'm adding to the issue right now, so I do apologize...)

308> I'm getting tired of your venomous spew. Is it always directed at Zoe or do you spread it around? Don't you understand how public forums work? They're public. Anyone can respond to anything. There is no idea of two people having a conversation; it is a free-for-all.

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 11:12am.

>309 You can do what I do. And that's block the person's posts so you don't have to read what they have to say. I haven't done it for many people, only ones that constantly post negativity.

Yeah, it's completely natural that one wants to blow off steam after getting more and more irritated with someone else. However, if we find ourselves in that situation, blocking the offender seems a much healthier option than personal attacks.

plenty of general nastiness

I've never seen any, though I do avoid the political groups where it might be more likely to be a problem. In fact I see more or less the reverse -- an atmosphere of total coddling that leads to tolerance of spam.

"Elitism", if that's a term for "caring about quality of conversation and data", well, that one I can see.

It is simply not agreed with because it isn't what the majority wanted. And keeping the majority happy actually keeps more users on the site (to follow the theme of the post).

I haven't seen the masses of people saying that they must see my Wishlist combined with my library. I didn't realize that looking at my books was a major part of what keeps people on the site.

What keeps people on the site (and keeps them promoting it to others) is when developers manage to get the most satisfaction out of the least effort. Changes that may be insignificant to some can make a big difference to others. Plus, the concept of keeping the wishlist more separate does have general support, even if not in the specific aspect that I'm concerned about. There are people who want purple checkmarks, people who want wishlists excluded from various statistics, and so on.

So do you just make up unrelated issues to throw out there so you can not address the real issues that aren't even addressed to you? PRIVACY =/= PUBLIC COLLECTION. Get it?

This is actually quite relevant to the main issue. It would be perfectly okay if I wanted to keep my Wishlist separate by making it entirely private; I'd certainly have to put up with a lot fewer angry rants.

Encouraging people to take parts of their library private in lieu of allowing other forms of control over their data is pretty much the worst approach LT can take. To use another comparison (not the same thing, but relevant to the point at hand--get it?), I've been supporting comments on reviews. Some people don't want this, so I think there should be an opt-out (or opt-in). I don't think people should either deal with an unwanted loss of control over their data or be forced to take their library private. And yet in the case of Wishlists, privacy seems to be preferred to user control.

I figured I'd be a human being and express my gratitude.

And, you know, throw in a few jibes along the way. Because of course calling other people's feature requests "mind-numbingly insane" is all part of the process of expressing gratitude.

We've also been big enough to use the feature as released and to have realized what's good about the change, what works and what could be effectively changed from a realistic perspective.

I'm using Collections as released. I didn't realize there was an obligation to use every single default. I also don't think that the minor changes I've suggested are at all unrealistic; if there were any other auto-generated default collection that couldn't be de-activated, you can bet that there would be a different group of people complaining about it (regardless of whether you call it a collection or something else).

On the topic of site-wide search, almost every time I visit LT, I get there by keying www.librarything.com/search into my address bar (letting autocomplete do most of the work for me).

313>

I haven't seen the masses of people saying that they must see my Wishlist combined with my library. I didn't realize that looking at my books was a major part of what keeps people on the site.

Well, not yours specifically, and not wishlists specifically, but looking at other people's books is, in fact, a major part of what keeps me on the site -- and being able to look at them in a manner of my choosing, rather than theirs, is in turn part of that. I don't have a real problem with excluding wishlists -- I would have a problem with being absolutely unable to look at all of someone's books in one place because, say, they had strict collections by the month when they read the book, or which bookshelf they keep it on, and had disabled All Collections because they personally didn't use it.

And All Collections isn't a collection. You don't put books into it and a book can't be in it and not in any "other" collection. It's a necessity -- there has to be some underlying way of tracking which books you "have". What you're objecting to, I assume, isn't its existence but its exposure.

I think I remember (and please excuse me if I'm remembering wrong) from last time around that you don't like the idea of a fixed "Collections" column, considering it to be unduly intrusive, but I really do think it would be preferable to encouraging users to disable such a useful feature as actually letting people view their library. (And yes, users can have a private library, but it's obvious in that case that it affects others -- naive users (like the sort who might be confused by a wishlist) might not realize that disabling "All Collections" just because they don't use it means *nobody* can view their library as an intact entity.

As an aside, personally, I almost never use All Collections, preferring Your Library, but I suspect the people who don't use Your Library are more likely than average to disable All Collections, since they've demonstrated a lack of interest in seeing their books in one place.

I use All Collections and have disabled Your Library because I think it is redundant. It is for me, anyway, because I only catalog books I own, except for that one book in my Wishlist.

I wouldn't put anything in my Wishlist I didn't want others to know I desire. I think that is the root of the problem here --not wanting others to see the Wishlist.

Trying to control the way others view your books is not only a waste of time, it's a little bit pathetic in my view.

>316

You're doing something unusual in that your divisions, like "dogs," "thurber," etc., are using accomplished through tags, not collections. I gather you're using tags for OCLC numbers?

317, yeppers.

eta, I thought that was what Collections was for! To say, here is my collection of books about horses, etc.

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 2:02pm.

I don't have a real problem with excluding wishlists -- I would have a problem with being absolutely unable to look at all of someone's books in one place because, say, they had strict collections by the month when they read the book, or which bookshelf they keep it on, and had disabled All Collections because they personally didn't use it.

I'm happy to look for other solutions that accomplish the same thing--if, for example, rather than letting users disable All Collections entirely, we had the option of switching it to display Most Collections (all but Wishlist) instead, I would be completely satisfied--actually, even more so than I would be with the straightforward disabling feature that I'm suggesting. I've so far been looking for the most straightforward and easily-programmable solution, which isn't to say I actually think it's the best one.

I think I remember (and please excuse me if I'm remembering wrong) from last time around that you don't like the idea of a fixed "Collections" column, considering it to be unduly intrusive, but I really do think it would be preferable to encouraging users to disable such a useful feature as actually letting people view their library.

I do think a fixed "Collections" column would be overly intrusive, but less so if there were an abbreviated Collections column that used symbols to distinguish the main collections (something purple for Wishlist, green for Your Library, etc.). But I do think simply excluding Wishlist from All Collections (or displaying in place of All Collections something that excludes Wishlist) would be preferable--no crippling of other people's ability to browse catalogues, and no imposition of columns either.

I wouldn't put anything in my Wishlist I didn't want others to know I desire. I think that is the root of the problem here --not wanting others to see the Wishlist.

No, this is pretty much the opposite of the problem. I know that eventually there will be more nuanced privacy options, and I'll be able to have a private Wishlist then if I want. But I don't want to have a private Wishlist, I just want to keep it entirely separate from everything else.

Then you're screwed.

318: Tags and collections are both ways to group books. They just have different effects. :)

If I were Tim, I'd remove All Collections from the collections drop-down and add a new UI element to the catalog page to either filter the books by Collection or not and see them all.

Then I'd turn off the ability to disable the Your Libraries collection. This collection would then become the basis for comparing libraries as when you look at someone's profie and it shows you the books you have in common. (It shouldn't show someone's wishlist book as a common book although a new function that just compares the wishlists of two users might be interesting).

318>

Well, that's one way to do it; other people, probably more, do what you're doing with tags, and use Collections for more "content-agnostic" divisions like read and owned status. When I browse libraries like yours I always use "All Collections" because that's the only way to get a sense of someone's overall library without jumping through a million hoops.

322: I don't care as much where "All Collections" is, as long as I can tell which collection I'm in and switch to All Collections.

Edit: for my own library

Message edited by its author, Dec 14, 2009, 3:38pm.

Back to the original topic...I tried Goodreads for the last month or so, mostly to share reading history on Facebook. I didn't like it much. I imported only my To Be Read books of which several could not be found. I tried to mostly use the FB app since I visit there most days, but it's almost counter-intuitive to enter updates especially after finishing a book. And no matter what settings I had, it was inconsistent as to what would be published on my profile/newsfeed. When I happened to complete just the right steps in the right order, I did like how my review text appeared with the posted link item, even if it repeated that I had just "added" this book.

However, I just now deleted my entire account because I was exploring WorldCat and saw a review of mine there with my real name. There is not a setting anywhere I could find to control the publishing of this information which I find bad form.

I also discovered a way that I liked to connect reviews here to FB. When posting, you have the opportunity to change the name of the link title so I added contextual info that would make sense to FB comrades who may see such a post (and hopefully follow the link back to LT to see the rest of my stuff).

However, I just now deleted my entire account because I was exploring WorldCat and saw a review of mine there with my real name. There is not a setting anywhere I could find to control the publishing of this information which I find bad form.

Ugh! I can't believe this. I guess that's it for GR....

Yeah, what do you expect? It hurts us a lot—forced email virality in particular would be a big win—but LT has a very different attitude toward these things.

No different than LT. When reviews started to be given out I checked Unchosen. That was what I wanted.

At some point after that there was an addition to the Unchosen option, that said ' Unchosen changes to unrestricted 30 days after sign up'. I was never notified of the change, and it wasn't there when I picked Unchosen. I don't have any reason to go to that screen, and I found out by accident that it was unrestricted (being given out).

I am sure there are many people who don't realize LT made the choice for them, and never let them know.

As a follow-up, it turns out the name on WorldCat is the public name that shows up on your GR account, so that's fine with me. I don't mind them using my reviews as long as they don't reveal personal information.

I have discovered a decent workaround for showing LT stuff in Facebook, if anyone is interested:

Facebook has an app called RSS Graffiti. It allows you to have any RSS feed show up in your News Feed OR Status feed. Configurable per feed, and you can add standardized text to each entry if desired. I use it to show my Recently-added books. I haven't tried the reviews feed, so I don't know if the actual review would show up - the Recently-Added will show title, author, pub info, and add date/time.

It's ... not a bad workaround for the moment.

#325-its not just random GR's reviews on there there is also ones from Amazon so if you post your reviews there they may be on there too.
I just went and looked and found a couple of my reviews and I thought cool!Of course they just say by, susie not my full real name.

>328

Sorry. Quite wrong. "Unchosen" was always a timed thing—expressly stated as the state that changes in 30 days if you don't choose. Before we started syndicating reviews to libraries we created the options--none, libraries only, everyone and unchosen—set everyone to unchosen and sent out profile messages inviting people to choose.

The fact remains that GR isn't either opt-in or opt-out. Everyone is in no matter what, and to every buyer—library or not. We're not opt-out either, although it would profit us. We're a thirty-day period before, if you don't opt either way, you're opt-out.

Message edited by its author, Dec 16, 2009, 2:49pm.

>330.

I'm not sure how RSS Graffiti works, as I'm probably one of three people in the universe who don't use Facebook, but one issue with LT reviews is that they take the book's ENTRY date for the date. Thus, they may look backdated.

I generate an aggregated feed for all my bloggies/RSSies/etceties, and the people who follow me on LiveJournal don't normally see my reviews because of this reason. People using a Reader (like Google Reader) do see it, though.

So, if the RSS reader utility doesn't care WHEN the post was made, it'll show it, otherwise, it'll hide it somewhere in the archives, which is TOTALLY ANNOYING (for some people).

#332. That explains everything. I've always suspected that I was one of the unchosen many.

> 332

>328

Sorry. Quite wrong. "Unchosen" was always a timed thing—expressly stated as the state that changes in 30 days if you don't choose. Before we started syndicating reviews to libraries we created the options--none, libraries only, everyone and unchosen—set everyone to unchosen and sent out profile messages inviting people to choose.



I dispute that, because that is not how I remember it.

There was no information on 30 days when I went to that screen the first time. And I never got a PM saying I had to do something or in 30 days LT would do it for me.

*pats bnielsen on the head*

>329 Yes this is true, thanks for clarifying. I know I had a little trouble figuring out which name was which on the profile, but then I was only there a short time.

It actually wasn't the worst thing in the world to see this review on another site as of course just like Amazon they are likely to allow info be aggregated. This one stood out because it was more obscure book so mine was the only review, and I do make an effort to not leave too many digital crumbs online.

>330 I tried Social RSS for the same reason, but no updates ever got posted and I was not sure which part of the process was failing. But then I started mass-unloading Facebook Apps anyway after the last privacy terms change...

>337

Well, RSS Graffiti definitely works. I've tried several other apps (like Social RSS) that never had anything show up, but people have commented on a few items from this one, so I know they're seeing it. I use very few apps on Facebook, but this one is providing a real benefit for me and does not appear to be evil ;).

326: That's one of the reasons I don't want to join Paperbackswap. Your first name and initial automatically show publicly (from your "send books to" address) and there is no option to override it. At least no option that the friend as member could find.

>338

Thanks for the recommendation, giving it a try now.

@276 Tim wrote that "LibraryThing's actual growth and meaningful use
is primarily driven by much smaller streams--personal recommendations,
direct links, blog posts, blog widgets, etc." and I want to +1 @306.

Exactly! This is what makes the LT/FB thing so frustrating. All the
threads here about Facebook have shown that what LT users who are
interested in a FB application primarily are interested in is having a
way to tell their FB friends things like "I'm reading this" or "I just
reviewed that" with links to LT. (Some have had other preferences as
well, but this has been the dominant view in every thread about this
I've read.)

Well, you don't always get what you want, but the frustrating part is
that I'm (we're) so sure that this that we want would be so good for
LT, since that is bibliophiles leading their friends, many of whom are
bibliophiles, here. I'm sure many have explicitly recommended LT to
their friends, but one such recommendation isn't much compared to
saying *over* and *over* again that "by the way, I use LT for my
library" whenever you tell them stuff about your library.

There are signs that something will come. Tim wrote before collections
were ready that FB was the next-to-highest priority after collections.
And now there is talk about it again.

But still I get the impression that LT is on the wrong track on this.
In April
(http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/04...)
Tim wrote that some new cover-animation code came from the upcoming FB
application. What? I don't want no steenkin' cover animation. I just
want to tell my friends "Per is now reading XXX" with a LT link that
says (in not so many words) "btw, here is what Per is using for his
library – since you respect his choice in these matters this might be
worth checking out". If any animation appears in their newsfeeds they
would filter me out, or rather, that would be a dealbreaker for me,
and I wouldn't use the app.

And now Tim wrote about a "redo of the connections code, including the
friends code and using the new Facebook Connect structure". OK... So
that is probably useful for some of the extra things that some people
also want. But what about the main thing that it seems like many more
users want, and that would be great daily advertising for you?

I'm afraid that the "FB situation" has been going on for so long now
that to give us what we want would seem anticlimactic for many, and
thus a super duper app with rotating 3d smell-o-vision featuritis is
seen as necessary now. Is there a way out of this? Maybe it's better
to ask for more kinds of RSS feeds and then import them wherever?

>341 Great post.

Tim, can you comment on what exactly the plans for FB are?

This is just to say that I completely agree with 341. All *I* want to do is say "Abby is currently reading ----- by ---- on LibraryThing. See my library here."

(off-topic, sort of)

>343
I'd love to have the same thing for Twitter. This feature was the sole reason I had a GoodReads account.

Message edited by its author, Dec 18, 2009, 11:53am.

>343 Me, too. I want something that says, "Here's what I'm reading/I've read."

A cover would be nice. Not animated though. Yuck.

#343 Yep, I'm with Abby. That and a 'Claire's just finished X by X on LT' possibly with the option of 'and here's her review *link*' and if I could tweet that too that would be frosting.

>346 Yes, "Just Finished" would be great. I'm too spoiler-phobic to post books I've just started, unless they're non-fiction.

I'd like control over what other links are provided in the newsfeed item: catalogue, review, etc. I don't always want to share *everything* with people on Facebook.

>344-6
Me too.

>343+

That's what I'd like too, but I'd also really like to see:

-Chris added XYZ to his library in collection(s) 123; tagged: abc
-Chris reviewed XYZ: blah blah review text

Cover images would be a must.

Message edited by its author, Dec 18, 2009, 11:57am.

Agreed that covers are essential. Tags would be nice. Collections wouldn't be particularly interesting for my books, but I wouldn't object to the option.

I wonder whether it would be useful to start a new thread about what we'd like to see in Facebook integration?

The plans are to do it, and fairly minimally at first. We don't need smell-o-vision.

We don't need smell-o-vision.

Not even for Pink Flamingos?

>351 Great!

But I still think it could be useful to find out exactly what members are looking for... ;)

no one wants to post their ratings to Facebook? I figure ratings are the most likely thing to start a discussion...

I always imagine it posting something like a single item from the "Most Recent Activity" section of my profile.

>354 no one wants to post their ratings to Facebook?

Good catch, I had forgotten about stars. Ideally, those could get rolled up into "finished reading" and/or "reviewed" updates.

>350 Collections wouldn't be particularly interesting for my books, but I wouldn't object to the option.

For those of us who utilize collections, it would be essential. I've really wanted this for RSS feeds, because there's a huge difference between "Chris added XYZ to his library" and "Chris added XYZ to his wishlist".

>354 The thing is, ratings are a lot more personal and some of us have a wide selection of friends on FB (including people we know in an academic setting). So it's one thing to say I've read Twilight, and something else entirely to say I liked it.

>355 Oh, I forgot about the dreaded Wishlist. Yeah, I can see why that distinction would be important.

all I'd want to share is what I've just bought/started reading/currently reading or what I've finished w/maybe a blurb from my review & a rating. if anyone wants more they could come visit me here.