We know our book database isn't perfect (although we'll never stop trying!), so we've created the ability for you to add books we're currently missing. At the bottom of each search result, you'll see a link that says "Still nothing? You can add the book to our catalog yourself!". From there, it's a simple two-step process.

1) Enter the correct information for the book onto the page (Author/Title/ISBN). ISBN is the best may to make sure there are no duplicates, so it might be worth the effort to spend the extra time finding the ISBN before you upload.




2) We'll search for potential duplicates. Confirm it is not already listed. This should hopefully help you out in case you accidentally misspelled an entry. As you can imagine, in the example I show here, Harry Potter is already in our database, so I won't choose to add it again.




We hope this lets you maintain a more accurate collection, is easy to use, and provides a better experience on ReadingSocial by letting you guys help us build an even better database.

We've received quite a few pieces of feedback from everyone, that, when taken together, made us realize we had to provide better management tools for your shelves. Common suggestions and feedback we have received are generally around the following:

- It's not easy to delete an item from your bookshelf you have mistakenly added twice or don't want anymore
- There is no way to clear a rating
- There is no way to edit a review
- It's impossible to sort by rating or by author

Of course there are more ideas we've received, but all in all, they usually asked directly and indirectly for better ways to manage your collections. We're pleased to have recently launched a new tab entitled "Manage" that helps solve many of these problems. You'll find a spreadsheet-like interface that allows you to edit and modify most of your information right from the "Manage" page. If you get the chance, see what books you've read but are yet to review, add ratings to those you haven't read, or delete a book you've inadvertently added twice.

Yesterday we rolled out a new feature to a limited set of people (1000 users) that surfaces people we think may have similar tastes in books to you. We try to find people with many books on their shelves that are similar to you so you'll be able to browse their bookshelves and find a few hidden gems you weren't aware of. We'll continue to refine the logic and once we've worked out a few kinks, roll out to everyone. Please leave us feedback on how you think this should work and if you're one of the lucky 1000 users who has the "similar tastes" module in the right rail of the "my shelf" page, please don't hesitate at all.

Well, I cranked out a quick and dirty / minimalist iPhone interface.

http://readers.livingsocial.com/iphone

You can only do a few things with it right now:

1. Search for a book and update its status (so when you hear about a great book, you can search for it and mark it was ‘want to read’).
2. Browse your already read, reading now, and want to read lists. If you finish a book on a park bench you can quickly update its status to ‘already read’ (all news feed items, profile updates, etc. will be posted as normal.. even if it’s not indicated on the iPhone interface).

Limitations (for the time being):

1. ReadingSocial only.
2. Must have/log in with your external ReadingSocial account (Facebook users: you will have to register for a full account and link your Facebook collection).
3. Not paginated… only shows a handful of books per status (i.e. only the first 100 books on your want to read list are visible). I’ll implement pagination after the first person with a big collection asks for the feature.
4. Must navigate to readers.livingsocial.com/iphone… I’m not going to force all iPhone users over to the new app yet since it’s just an experiment.

I was basically looking to scratch a personal itch… stick the (simpler) iPhone feature requests in the comments section here and I’ll see what I can do. I must admit, it is satisfying to be out and about and mark a book as ‘want to read’ on my iPhone and come back later and see it on my Facebook profile/news feed/etc.

If you do, you're not alone. A book missing its cover is one of the more frequent problems that gets reported to us, so we've tried to create a solution that helps solve this problem. If you go to a book and see that the cover is missing, there should be an option below the cover image to "Upload cover". From there, it's a simple process to upload an image.


Additionally, if you want to upload a different cover for the book then what is displayed, you can add a second image and a small gallery will appear with the new image. With this new function, we also want to make sure we're taking care of any inappropriate content. Under "report", there is now the capability to report an inappropriate image or report copyrighted material. We will continue to do our best in making sure ReadingSocial stays as current and up-to-date as possible.

A frustration we know sometimes occurs is when you add a book to your shelf that you've forgotten you had previously added. The underlying cause is generally because many books have multiple editions, so if you're looking at a book page that's different then the version you've already added, it doesn't reflect. We've started to try and solve this problem by doing 3 things:

1) When you do a search result, we'll try and let you know if you have a similar book on your shelf already. In the example here, you can see that I have added one version of Catcher in the Rye, but in the second and third search results we surface that a similar book is on my shelf already.

2) We use this same logic within our recommendations and no longer will recommend you something that appears similar in title to something already on your shelf.

3) On a book page, if it appears similar to something on your shelf, we'll let you know.

We'll continue to improve this process and hope to offer ways to be able to link editions in the future in a way that is intuitive and provides the best experience possible. Happy reading!

For those long-time users of ReadingSocial, you may remember a feature that allowed you to embed your collection on your blog or another site. As we made changes to the product, we had to disable that feature in order to allow larger changes to work. I am happy to report that you once again can display your collection anywhere you'd like. Here is an example of my collection:



In order to get your widget, simply go to the "Profile" tab and switch to rolodex mode ("toggle to rolodex" on the top of your books). From there, you will see a link to embed your collection. This will generate a snippet of code that you just need to copy and paste into the appropriate place. The default size is 450px x 400px, but you can resize it by changing the width and height in the code snippet. One limitation is that, if you have an extremely large collection (over 1000 books), the widget is very slow so we've disabled the option for larger collections. We'll work to improve this and other aspects in the future.

We've been working hard to clean up the integrity of our database. One of the most problematic items we've run into is that many books have been made into movies and sometimes those movies slip through into our database. We know this can be incredibly annoying because people will inadvertently add a movie instead of a book, and well, movies just don't belong with books anyhow!

Today we're happy to let you know that we've tried our darnedest to remove all movies from from ReadingSocial. We hope we caught everything, but just in case, we put a "report" button below each book where you can let us know if it's not a book.

Additionally, if you find anything else wrong with the book, please feel free to let us know through one of the other options on the "report" button.

Today we want to let you know about some new functionality we just pushed live - merit awards. You can now earn awards in two different ways:

1) Earn awards based on your reading and cataloging prowess. If you reach 1000 books read, you become a member of the 1K club; 2000 books the 2K club and so on, up until 10,000 books, in which case you're be a "Top Reader". If you earn one of these awards, you will see a ribbon award adorn your profile picture in certain spots as well as your shelf.

2) The "Community Enthusiast" award is given out to a member of our Reading Community who truly exemplifies the spirit of sharing book knowledge and collections with others in order to create a more vibrant book community. The recipient of the award is someone who is viewed as a leader in the community by others, actively participates on a regular basis, and fosters good will among other readers. The award is given out on an as-needed basis and will be reflected on a user's publicly viewable "shelf" page for all to see.

The inaugural recipient of this award is Mark Woodland. Mark exemplifies the above traits with aplomb and his collection of books is only surpassed by the thoughtfulness by which it was put together. Mark is an active participant in the community and is consistently looked to for advice around application functionality, book suggestions, and much, much more. Congrats to Mark on receiving this first "Community Enthusiast" award.

BookCrossing is a book swapping site that we're pleased to have entered into a partnership. For those of you not familiar with BookCrossing or the concept of book swapping, it's a neat way to find discover and share new books for free. When you're done reading a book, you can release it into "the wild" through BookCrossing and let others enjoy. You can learn more about the service from their FAQs.

Now the home page for each book, if there is a book released into the wild, we'll surface it to you so you can see if it's anywhere near you. Look for us to continue to improve this functionality and happy swapping.

Out at GraphingSocial Patterns in San Diego, we were fortunate enough to be chosen to demo one of our products in the OpenSocial division of the app contest. After putting some finishing touches on things that afternoon, Aaron took to the stage and presented ReadingSocial .

The demo consisted of showing our Facebook app, Visual Bookshelf integrated with our sandbox versions of ReadingSocial in Orkut, MySpace, and Bebo. We showed how, literally a MySpace user could respond to question from a Facebook user. Lastly, we tried to tie it all together by showing how it was all accessible outside of any social network at ReadingSocial , which is part of LivingSocial .

Thanks to Dave McClure, Charles Rive Ventures and Social Media for supplying the prize of a Gift Certificate to the Apple Store for a MacBook Air. For more coverage, check out Rafe Needleman from CNet's Webware blog or a Video interview with Information Week's TechTV.