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

washingtonpost.com

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

#311

Post by birdymcbird »

article puts goodreads problems on amazon. partially true but lazy journalism.

much goodreads leadership same as when amazon bought them. i know because i work close to them before i leave amazon.

tech was outdated ruby on rails. the engineering org has very low technical bar and love inventing things that amazon already solve at scale. more energy put into resisting amazon than thinking about innovation. lots and lots of waste.

i do wonder how amazon layoffs affected goodreads. i would clean house.

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

#312

Post by therealdrag0 »

kmos17 wrote: post #244
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…

As much as the IMDB rankings are obviously gamed (especially when a movie or series just came out) I find the ratings fairly accurate over time, a 7+ is usually pretty decent to great for 8+, ratings of 6 are usually pretty average and 5 and below are truly awful.

Agree. Except for Indian movies. Their ratings aren’t trustworthy. Lots of 8+ movies they’re mediocre or bad (despite high production costs).

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

#313

Post by smeagull »

pfdietz wrote: post #226
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like what you're doing right now?

You do realize that's both an ad hominem argument and an admission he's correct, right?

There's no admission that he's correct there at all. The existence of one bad faith actor doesn't make everyone a bad faith actor.

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

#314

Post by therealdrag0 »

qingcharles wrote: post #247
kawera wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention reviewers with 3k+ reviews. Who in their right mind properly read and review 3k books?

WTF. I spent 10 years in jail reading endlessly and only managed about 900 in total. And I had LITERALLY nothing else to do.

You read 90 a year. I’ve read 75 a year while going to school or working full time. So it’s possible to read more, and for more than 10 years.

(However I might lose my mind if I did that. Even at 75 I started to feel like I was wasting my life with over consumptions.)

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

#315

Post by fsckboy »

kbenson wrote: post #233
fsckboy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Company A is 6 days away from going out of business...But then Company B agrees to buy them for $1...Ban it? versus scenario 2, Company A is profitable. Company B is smaller, but up and coming. An announcement is made that A will buy B and everything will be better. Layoffs ensue, product lines are dropped, employees and customers are very unhappy, but prices and profits are up. Since scenario 2 is quite common tod…

> that's a better way to run markets. I'm highly skeptical that heavily restricting buying and selling of companies in general will be a better way to run a market when it seems your goal is to prevent monopolies (or put another way, ensure competition). Laser focused policies work for a short periods but tend to be worked around quickly as the thing they regulate falls out of favor in lieu of something functionally…

>I'm highly skeptical that heavily restricting buying and selling of companies in general will be a better way to run a market when it seems your goal is to prevent monopolies (or put another way, ensure competition)

ah, the markets I am talking about are goods and services markets. Financial markets, they take care of themselves, and at the same time garner no sympathy from the majority who don't participate in them.

if monopolies emerge some other way, sure, break 'em up just the same.

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

#316

Post by MandieD »

yurishimo wrote: post #98
tecleandor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like this is culturally different for some things. And corporations can influence too. I have a friend who has four restaurants in Tokyo, and I've been several times there. If you keep attention to the restaurant reviews in Google Maps, Japanese people is very hard. They'd go like "The food is great, incredible service, surprising flavors, very good experience, best Spanish food I've had in a long time..." and…

100% it's cultural. In the Netherlands, companies brag about a 7 or 8 out of ten as proof of their amazing customer service. When I lived in America, it seemed the consensus of anything under a 9 is killing puppies. Coincidentally, NPS is entirely based on this fact. 8+ is required for a "happy customer". 7 is given a little wiggle room to win them back and under 6 is a lost cause.

Fun related fact about 1-5 survey responses in Germany: make sure you specify that 5 is the top mark and 1 is the bottom, otherwise you’re liable to get some really odd results.

This is because 1 is the highest grade (mark) in school, and 5 is failing, as is the even-worse 6.

And even so informed, or accustomed to 1-5 scale used by everyone else, Germans are more likely than Americans to give a 4 instead of a 5 to something that they were happy with, but was not the best they’d ever experienced.

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

#317

Post by Yoofie »

idopmstuff wrote: post #162
fsckboy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway. That's where my pet antitrust solution succeeds where others fail: ban all M&A. Companies only engage in mergers to consolidate market share, but their market share consolidation (i.e. monopolization) not only decreases competition, but also comes at the expense of employees and customers of the acq…

So what happens to the mom and pop hardware store that's been running for 30 years when mom and pop want to retire? They just have to shut their doors? Banning all M&A would run into a brick wall of unintended consequences. If no one can sell their business, then a significant percent of potential small business owners just wouldn't start businesses. Then what would happen? Those people would go get jobs. Instead of…

Ok, we can ban M&A for all businesses who exceed $x million in revenue. Mom & pop can still put the work in and cash out, but bigger businesses are prohibited from eating eating their competitors and preventing disruptive businesses from growing and having a fair shot in the market.

The $x million limit can be decided upon based on the industry and other factors.

>nobody would ever create Goodreads

Lots of people create of businesses and pursue non-profitable enterprises for non-profitable reasons.

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

#318

Post by scrum-treats »

jimmySixDOF wrote: post #195
scrum-treats wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with Book Depository, AbeBooks, and Avalon Books. And more generally Whole Foods, Alexa Internet, IMDB, Fabric.com, Woot, Zappos, Evi, Graphiq... When will consumers have protection against this degrading of the marketplace already?

You skipped Audible which I would add to the list of give it just enough oxygen to stay alive but no innovation allowed strategies. You can't even connect your Audible account to your GoodReads. Audible is the app I would most like to replace that I use almost everyday.

We see this with Amazon Music offerings as well. Focus on acquisition and accumulation, not innovation.

For Books, Amazon has (1) Kindle, (2) Kindle Unlimited (... a direct competitor to Audible), (3) Kindle Vella (somewhat of a Goodreads competitor), (4) Audible, (5) Amazon.com (retail), (6) Prime Reading, and externally (7) Abe Books, (8) Comixology, (9) Book Depository. And then there are Children's versions...

For Music, Amazon has (1) Amazon Music Unlimited, (2) Prime Music, (3), Amazon Music Free, (4) Amp, and has just acquired (5) Wondery.

I'm cool with checking out audiobooks from Libby, and whatever music app opens consistently when I want it to (i.e., not Amazon Music). Support your local libraries!

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