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Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

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Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#61

Post by hospitalJail »

Lolaccount wrote: post #42
CaptainZapp wrote: post #7

> By joining Amazon, Goodreads has accelerated their mission to delight customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology. Seriously, reading the diarrhea vomited out by corporate PR shills nowadays seriously makes my teeth hurt. Do those people actually believe the bullshit they're spouting to the general public?

I've found that "delight customers" is the key phrase. Just write a script that excludes any articles which mentions that phrase for a better life. That's been a pretty reliable indicator over the last decade.

Nah, better marketers know to pretend to be a frustrated human who relents because 'this is the best we got and everything else sucks even more'.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#62

Post by mikestew »

tivert wrote: post #55
sdfghswe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that Amazon is concerned that a database is enough to threaten their business?

> Why do you think that Amazon is concerned that a database is enough to threaten their business? Didn't the GP already answer the question you asked of them? >> It was a purely defensive move to prevent anyone else from acquiring or partnering with Goodreads, because their database of books and reviews could be used to instantly start competing with Amazon's book business. Amazon snuffed out that threat of competiti…

Didn't the GP already answer the question you asked of them?

Do you really that the question was asked in good faith? I know, I know, HN guidelines, but that question was asked to rephrase the question in overly simplistic terms, willfully ignoring that there is more to Goodreads than a mere DB.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#63

Post by hospitalJail »

CalRobert wrote: post #18

I interviewed with Goodreads in 2012. If there's one thing I learned it's that when you give people weird gimmick problems ("How many Starbucks are there in Manhattan?") in an 8 hour interview that was supposed to be 2 hours, you're going to produce an awful lot of ill will when you reject people because they're "too technical". The whole thing was the most bizarre interview experience of my life.

I had a 1 hour interview go for 3 hours because they couldn't get the HR, hiring manager, and engineer at the same time.

Ended up telling the sameish stories 3 times.

They offered me a job, then covid happened, then they offered me it at a 10% decrease, then they canceled the contract, then they called me 6 months later. I already had a job at that point and they were begging me to leave.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#64

Post by waspight »

fastball wrote: post #12

Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking. Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book…

I have thought about this relative rating as well. Would it be possible to use? I mean, does it scale? I also have seen some ratings where you can only rate between 5 - 10, I guess since no one ever rates below 5 anyway. I think it kind of works.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#65

Post by SoftTalker »

tivert wrote: post #55
sdfghswe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that Amazon is concerned that a database is enough to threaten their business?

> Why do you think that Amazon is concerned that a database is enough to threaten their business? Didn't the GP already answer the question you asked of them? >> It was a purely defensive move to prevent anyone else from acquiring or partnering with Goodreads, because their database of books and reviews could be used to instantly start competing with Amazon's book business. Amazon snuffed out that threat of competiti…

Weirdly I've rarely bought a book based on reviews on the selling site.

I don't go to Amazon and browse for books, reading reviews. I go to Amazon when I've already determined from other sources which book(s) I want to buy.

Maybe I'm in the minority.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#66

Post by throw0101a »

fastball wrote: post #12

Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking. Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book…

For a while now I've though that maybe only three rankings are needed:

* Recommend this thing

* Neutral opinion

* Do not recommend this thing

Not sure how much "neutral" would be used: kind of like thumbs-up/down or up-down-vote mechanic: if you're neutral you may simply not vote at all.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#67

Post by andsoitis »

tivert wrote: post #55
sdfghswe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that Amazon is concerned that a database is enough to threaten their business?

> Why do you think that Amazon is concerned that a database is enough to threaten their business? Didn't the GP already answer the question you asked of them? >> It was a purely defensive move to prevent anyone else from acquiring or partnering with Goodreads, because their database of books and reviews could be used to instantly start competing with Amazon's book business. Amazon snuffed out that threat of competiti…

On Goodreads, the Buy button allows you to buy from:

- Amazon

- Audible

- Barnes & Noble

- AbeBooks

- Walmart

- Libraries

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#70

Post by JohnFen »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #7

> By joining Amazon, Goodreads has accelerated their mission to delight customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology. Seriously, reading the diarrhea vomited out by corporate PR shills nowadays seriously makes my teeth hurt. Do those people actually believe the bullshit they're spouting to the general public?

> Do those people actually believe the bullshit they're spouting to the general public?

I don't know. but I do know that the best marketers I've worked with all had one trait in common: they believed their own bullshit. One told me outright that the first thing he has to do when taking on a new account is to convince himself that the story he needs to tell is true because that stops him from having to lie.

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