Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

newstatesman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#61

Post by jpindar »

chrisseaton wrote: post #41
Abhinav2000 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they had to pay goodreads a commission each time (say 5% —> i’m completely making this number up and its probably a lot lower). So if 70% of goodreads profit is from Amazon, amazon figured they could just buy them since the cost of running goodreads is a lot lower than the commissions it makes so amazon was basically paying them anyway. better (in their view at the time) to just pay goodreads one off and buy…

> Because they had to pay goodreads a commission each time But why were they doing that? "the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon" so they were buying through Amazon anyway.

The users were hooked on buying from Amazon. But they were following the affiliate links from Goodreads to get to Amazon.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#62

Post by Negitivefrags »

prepend wrote: post #7

I have used goodreads since soon after launch. It’s probably the worst site that I use, but I prefer it’s benign neglect over the “improvements” made on the main amazon site. I just use it as a list of books of I’ve read and am reading, and to see books that my friends are reading or have read. It’s been funny to me that the search is horrible and seems to be something worse than just regexing a list of book titles.…

I can’t think of a website in any domain where people don’t complain about recommendations.

People complain about goodreads, Netflix, amazon, etc.

Even things like google ads whose business is ultimately showing ads for products you might like to buy, a kind of recommendation algorithm, people constantly complain about irrelevance. And they have billions of dollars on the line for making that better, not to mention a dataset that is second to none about the internet using population.

Maybe good recommendations is actually just super hard and nobody has really solved it well.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#65

Post by boring_twenties »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #62
prepend wrote: post #7

I have used goodreads since soon after launch. It’s probably the worst site that I use, but I prefer it’s benign neglect over the “improvements” made on the main amazon site. I just use it as a list of books of I’ve read and am reading, and to see books that my friends are reading or have read. It’s been funny to me that the search is horrible and seems to be something worse than just regexing a list of book titles.…

I can’t think of a website in any domain where people don’t complain about recommendations. People complain about goodreads, Netflix, amazon, etc. Even things like google ads whose business is ultimately showing ads for products you might like to buy, a kind of recommendation algorithm, people constantly complain about irrelevance. And they have billions of dollars on the line for making that better, not to mention a…

Amazon has gone down the shitter in more ways than one, but back in the day, circa 2005, I remember being downright amazed by their recommendation engine for music. Back then I would buy music on CDs. After a while I got into the habit of simply buying random stuff I've never heard of just based on their recommendation, and I don't recall a single instance when I regretted it.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#66

Post by SECProto »

LockAndLol wrote: post #34
thewhitetulip wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's alright if they bought it, and it is a very bad social media. You'd think that they'd improve the app right? Facebook/Instagram should just add a books section to their main page as a challenger to goodreads, maybe that'll help?

That's one of the best jokes I've read all day. Instagram and book reading. That cracked me up. Thank you

I have a number of friends who have posted a book they've enjoyed in their story after finishing. I've gotten a few recommendations and had a few good discussions from that.

Social media is pretty dependent on how you use it - I have non-toxic experiences because I mostly only follow people I know on twitter/IG/FB. Turn off retweets (or equiv) for those who use it to spread negative bs.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#67

Post by adventured »

prostoalex wrote: post #57
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon was pretty much forced to buy Goodreads: the original business model of Goodreads before the Amazon buyout was making money from referral links to booksellers. While links were provided to several internet booksellers besides Amazon, like Barnes & Noble, already the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amoun…

> Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amount of money in referral fees each month, and it made more sense for Amazon to simply buy the site and stop that. Does Amazon has a track record of buying major referral generators? I'd imagine someone like SlickDeals generates higher revenue with affiliate links to higher-ticket non-book items.

SlickDeals, as with most deal sites, is the equivalent of a B movie in Hollywood. They're considered trashy, low quality sites. Buying SlickDeals is close to bottom fishing if you're Amazon.

Goodreads was classy by comparison and was/is not primarily about deals or referral links. Amazon considers itself to own the book category, period. Books will always hold a special place in their heart as the origination of the company. Amazon, as with all big companies, also considers its brand when it purchases other things. (some of the tech echo chamber may laugh at that notion, however that's nothing more than ignorance as Amazon has an extraordinary brand among the general population)

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#68

Post by thorum »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #62
prepend wrote: post #7

I have used goodreads since soon after launch. It’s probably the worst site that I use, but I prefer it’s benign neglect over the “improvements” made on the main amazon site. I just use it as a list of books of I’ve read and am reading, and to see books that my friends are reading or have read. It’s been funny to me that the search is horrible and seems to be something worse than just regexing a list of book titles.…

I can’t think of a website in any domain where people don’t complain about recommendations. People complain about goodreads, Netflix, amazon, etc. Even things like google ads whose business is ultimately showing ads for products you might like to buy, a kind of recommendation algorithm, people constantly complain about irrelevance. And they have billions of dollars on the line for making that better, not to mention a…

Music recommendations seem to work OK. My Spotify discover playlists are always decent.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#69

Post by matthewfelgate »

Goodreads interface is terrible. I'm surprised Amazon hasn't shut Goodreads down.

All I want from Goodreads is:

    * A nice way to see all the books I've read
    * Maintain a list of "Want to read books"
    * A decent recommendation system for my next read
(If you like Goodreads I recommend Readwise, which lets you upload Kindle book highlights and helps you learn from them.)

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#70

Post by matthewfelgate »

a_bonobo wrote: post #18
prepend wrote: post #7

I have used goodreads since soon after launch. It’s probably the worst site that I use, but I prefer it’s benign neglect over the “improvements” made on the main amazon site. I just use it as a list of books of I’ve read and am reading, and to see books that my friends are reading or have read. It’s been funny to me that the search is horrible and seems to be something worse than just regexing a list of book titles.…

For me, recommendations got remarkably better once I used 5-10 tags ('shelves') per book for about 50 books I read - after that, the per-shelf recommendations got very good.

What does this mean?
Post reply on HN