Looks like Harpercollins UK are set to announce a book social networking site similar to Goodreads.com and librarything.com. Named BookArmy, users will be able to build a library of books using ISBNs, tag them and interact socially (online) with other book lovers. Importantly, the site is not restricting the participation to books published by Harpercollins.
In a post I wrote about branding several weeks ago, I wondered who the first major publisher would be to incorporate a books in print database on to their site and it looks like HC UK will be the one. (In comments to that post some did point out Bloomsbury tried this approach years ago).
No doubt there will be some questioning why we need another book oriented social network when we have shelfari, goodreads and librarything. Certainly a valid question, but I doubt the goodreads people wondered if they could complete with librarything when they got started and here they are only a few years later with bigger traffic. There is no reason to believe that HC will not appeal to a new segment - or steal some of the users from the incumbents. I hope they will be able to instill in the BookArmy brand something that is unique and unifying because if the site comes across as HC corporate in disguise it is unlikely to be successful. I think the HC people are smart enough to realize that.
Harpercollins is very actively trying new things online. There US site is vibrant and full of experimentation. Some have argued that they don't go far enough in allowing access to their content but the point is they are not adverse to experimentation. The UK and the US online exercises do seem to be different in approach. It is not that they are uncoordinated but their respective approaches seem different. In the UK BookArmy and Authonomy.com are examples where they have have taken the potential of the web to build community just a bit farther than the US office is doing.
What could be most interesting about this is how successful HC will be in promoting the site across the other NewsCorp sites particularly Myspace. If they are able to gain traction there then we could really begin to see a significant player in book social networking. Perhaps even a transaction site that could become very significant given the concentration of users around the Myspace brand. On the other hand, your typical Myspace user may not be the perfect book reader and therein lies the challenge. Taking the battle directly to the group less interested in reading could be just the thing that builds some renewed interest in published content.*
I hope to have more on this when the site launches next week.
* I am not saying the typical Myspace user doesn't read: We need them to read books in quantity!
3 comments:
Very true - it is an exciting prospect. However it is also fraught; the "social reading" space is very crowded, and whilst far from mature, there are some well-established players. LibraryThing is perfect for the hardcore bibliophile (if not the aesthete), GoodReads for the generalist and Shelfari for the light reader. All have traction and lots of members who are unlikley to re-enter all their books into another site until it has "network effect". (Unless they use LT's very cool export function of course).
I seem to remember looking at a beta /alpha BookArmy last year and being surprised that it had neither of my two litmus test titles (the ones I use for benchmarking all social reading sites). It was also - quite incredibly - in flash, meaning you can't link your page, or a title page, or browse it on a mobile/iphone, or find it in a search engine. This also means that its google ranking, and the ability to rank for individual title searches, was flawed. However I'm assuming they will have changed that on the new launch.
But you are quite right that HC has the vision, experience, and latitude to see how and why it could be a success - and why integrating it into the NewsCorp vertical could be very potent.
Another great post.
Hey I am one of the editors on the bookarmy site and its been really interesting reading all your comments! thanks. We love LibraryThing, Shelfari and Goodreads, which is why we decided to create Bookamry. We have tried to take the best things from all these websites and make a new one that is easier to use! It is still a working progress and we would love you to check it out... the site will be going live soon as soon as we have finished Beta testing. When it is ready we would be happy to give you a sneak preview as it would be great to get some feedback from you! i'll be in contact soon.
I am disappointed to find that the only option when buying a book from the site is from Amazon.
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