Friends + Books = Awesomeness 10

Posted by Tim
on Wednesday, September 03
Here at ReadingSocial, we've been spending a lot of time figuring out how we can improve one of the most important pages within site: the book page. We thought that was incredibly important, because well, the site is all about books after all! A few key things we tried to improve:

- Your friends: Something that we've been working on for some time is the ability to let you know if you're friends have read or have any opinions on the books you're looking at. So, you'll now see a new "Your Friends" section if one of your friends has the book on their shelf. Things like reviews and ratings will also show up. And don't worry if you're on a page and you don't see the section; it just means that none of your friends have added that book to their shelf.

- Less cluttered look and feel: We wanted to make the things that are really important really jump out at you. Hence, it should be very easy to change the status of the book on your shelf and to read the reviews of others. Additionally, we tried to make the cover one of the first things you will see!

- A new area to manage your relationship with the book: We've created a new area in the top right of the page that should easily let you add the book to your shelf, give an ownership status and rate the book. Now you can easily do this in one place!

As always, please either pass along thoughts, comments and suggestions either in the comments section of this blog or to feedback@livingsocial.com. And don't forget to check out the new design and functionality on our other verticals like ReelSocial and TuneSocial.
Comments

Leave a response

  1. MichelleD – September 04, 2008 @ 09:15 AM
    Hi there - I love the redesign, but something that's missing is having a space for your review on top - now when I go to a book's page I can't see what I wrote about it. Could this feature be re-introduced? Thanks!
  2. Katie – September 06, 2008 @ 08:29 PM
    When I toggle between the "new" facebook layout and the old one, my visual bookshelf changes on my profile. I made the mistake of displaying a small summary of each book that I'm reading, and I don't know how to change it back. All that displays now are the current books that I'm reading with a description, even though the "Settings" section of visual bookshelf shows otherwise. Please help, I don't like this!
  3. Olivier – September 07, 2008 @ 03:29 AM
    The ranking system is great. What would be even more awesome would be a possibility of choosing our main language and establish a ranking by language. I would love to figure out who are the main French leaders and what kind of books they are interested in !
  4. Alan Kercinik – September 07, 2008 @ 09:28 AM
    Love the new interface and the ways you're allowing mobile access to the app (e.g. iPhone interface). Any chance that more export options are coming? I don't always shop for books online and it would be great to have my "Want to Read" list available as either an easily exported, printable version or on my Blackberry.
  5. Hannah – September 08, 2008 @ 01:16 AM
    I agree with MichelleD; I think it'd be great if the feature that lets you see your review right at the very top was reintroduced. Also, the recommendations section down the bottom seems to be cut off by the columns layout, so that the covers furthest on the right are cut off. Otherwise, the new interface looks great! It'd be awesome if we could get two new additions to the "Own" and reading "Status" columns, too. A "Used to own" and a "Unfinished/Will not finish" option, respectively. I've given away a lot of books via Bookmooch that I want to make a note of instead of leaving the Own column blank, and there are some books that I give up on halfway. Would be wonderful if we could get those with the next update!
  6. Marisa Castle de Joncaire – September 09, 2008 @ 02:47 AM
    Actually, this is more of an indirect plea. Presumably, you have the ear of the people on Facebook. I tried their "new" Facebook page and absolutely hated it. Mercifully, I was able to return to the old-style Facebook. But now they're threatening to change us all over to the new style without our having a say in it. Would it be possible for you to ask them, on my behalf, to allow their users to keep the option of which style Facebook they use? Or to give me an email address for them so that I can ask them directly? I hated the new style so much I'm considering taking myself off Facebook altogether if it's imposed on us. Thanks.
  7. paul Murphy – September 09, 2008 @ 09:22 AM
    any chance of being able to click on my rank and go directly to my position on the leaderboard so I can see the people around me and what they are reading? I think this would be a nice addition for those of us at the bottom of the table.
  8. Amanda – September 11, 2008 @ 10:01 AM
    I also agree with MichelleD, we need to easily be able to access and edit our own reviews on the book's page. Thanks!
  9. Marc – September 13, 2008 @ 02:55 PM
    If you want to make your app better there are two things you really need: 1) A barcode scanner. A lot of people have built in cameras on their computers (iSight on the Mac laptops) and it would be nice to be able to scan the barcode rather than typing in the ISBN. A great example is in a program called Booxter. It's made for Macs and works awesome. 2) Pricing/Buying integration. I see that little link going to Amazon letting people buy a particular book, but it's not doing it for me. Include the ability to automatically search through several sites, Amazon included, and compare. The app should know if I own the book or not, so you can get rid of the "buy now" button on my homepage if I do. If you want to really expand, include the ability to sell for free. Students are looking for used books all the time and since they are already logged in to your app through Facebook, it'd be easy to start their looking there. Allow students to use filters (campus, city, web, cash, paypal, buy, trade) to potentially meet and get the book on the same day. You have my address if you want anymore ideas or elaboration on these.
  10. Flowerlady – September 13, 2008 @ 06:41 PM
    I have asked about this before but nothing has come of it. but there needs to be a way of editing the friends that we have added on. Most people add on people then they can subtract people that they may not get on with any more but you have yet to do anything about it.
Comment