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Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

booqsi.com

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Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#171

Post by JustAndy »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #18

I once was part of a now-defunct reading forum in my teens. On the forum, people would package three related books into quests. A boring example would be a dystopian quest pack with three books about three very different dystopian scenarios. But the quests people put together were usually more interesting. I remember a "Weird Magic" quest had books with really unconventional magic systems. I found Motherless Brooklyn…

This exact thing happens on r/suggestmeabook, but I'm not sure it happens that often.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#172

Post by Casteil »

justinberding wrote: post #35
paxys wrote: post #14

This is great but I'm not going to sign up just to see what the site looks like. There's no reason for a large part of the functionality (book info, ratings, reviews) to be behind a login wall. As it stands right now Goodreads is a lot more open.

To be honest, if you're looking just for book info, ratings, and reviews, Booqsi probably isn't the right site for you anyways. It's specifically meant to be a social platform, not a ratings or reviews site, which is why we don't actually have give users the ability to do either. We built it to be a social platform for you to engage with your community about books, with the underlying motivation that a book recommend…

Twitter doesn't make you create an account to see what other people are posting.

Pass.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#173

Post by jjude »

shreyshnaccount wrote: post #156
randomcatuser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh this is so neat!! Thanks for the idea Anyone want this? Can have it up in March

I'm making this, but for podcasts!

Can you please throw more info on what you are building? Have you written / tweeted about it anytime?

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#175

Post by DocTomoe »

Making it dependent on bookstore.org immediately cuts off international users. I'm not taking a transatlantic flight to "buy locally" - and the prices local bookstores ask for importing books are laughable (often three or four times the prices Amazon asks).

Sure, you could mention the ISBN, and I could manually go to Amazon, and find the thing, and buy it ... but what a hassle to me as the user just so that you as the site operator can make a political statement.

I would invite you to consider doing some geo-lookup of the user's ip address and provide alternative integrations.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#176

Post by lf-non »

sinkasapa wrote: post #123
lf-non wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has occasionally dabbled with fediverse, but never quite dived in, I have always found federated applications to be confusing from UX pov. In this case, what does interoperability mean ? When I sign up for the service I see options to create profile with one of the instances - how to choose an instance is not very obvious from that page. Some instances have specific themes, others don't - should I choo…

I don't find BookWyrm to be confusing at all. I assume most people use many applications without diving into every single feature or learning an underlying API that may be available. Why should BookWyrm be evaluated according to a different standard? I feel like you're conflating your confusion with how the fediverse works with a particular application that you don't seem to have evaluated based on its own merits.

I tend to evaluate a service based on what the service provider advertises as selling points. In case of BookWyrm, the very first feature listed in the home page is that its Decentralized. As a user I'd want to understand how that is an advantage for me - it would seem I can't without getting familiar with underlying protocol.

I have nothing against BookWyrm, I'd like to see such initiatives succeed.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#177

Post by shreyshnaccount »

jjude wrote: post #173
shreyshnaccount wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm making this, but for podcasts!

Can you please throw more info on what you are building? Have you written / tweeted about it anytime?

Havent posted publically just yet.. I couldn't find any good podcast exploration platforms or tools. Things like moonbeam are too random and things like subreddits either too inactive or too based on human recs and have a cold start problem. Its a real PITA finding good podcasts. So i figured I'll build a thing for it. The intention is to have something like a book club and what parent was saying for podcasts.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#178

Post by drusepth »

justinberding wrote: post #134
hadem wrote: post #128

I really wanted to like this website but I find the lack of password and magic links a very annoying way to authenticate to the website. I also imagine the magic link would confuse many users who are used to a traditional login form with email address and password. I admit, this site caught my attention but I refuse to have to check my email, for a link that doesn't resolve behind my firewall, just to authenticate to…

To clarify on the magic link, you only have to do that the first time. The authentication in the backend remembers you when you go back to the site, automatically logging you in. Ideally you'll only have to check your email once.

This is assuming you're always on the same device, don't clear cookies, don't use multiple browsers/profiles, don't mask your browsing in other ways, don't use rotating/temporary emails, etc. I logged in three times today and needed a magic link each time. My password manager would have autocompleted correctly in any of those situations... were there a password field to use.

I've gone weeks not logging into services like Slack before just to avoid dealing with trying to get into associated email accounts. Magic links are one of my least favorite "convenience" paradigms to emerge over the past couple years: they're less efficient, less secure, and more annoying/confusing friction for many users, and reinforce a reliance on email at a time when many people are trying to wean off it.

Best of luck with the rest of the site though!

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