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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

#351

Post by kibwen »

fsckboy wrote: post #85
teamspirit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's exactly why so many startups get bought. Not to become part of the parent company's business, no, just not to become a competitor later. Would stronger (and enforced) anti trust laws be a solution? I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway.

> 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…

FWIW, this is also the conclusion that I've come to. Mergers only make markets less competitive, and the mere existence of acquisitions creates perverse incentives that distort the startup market into utter uselessness. The experiment has failed, ban it all, and ignore the protestations of the get-rich-quick crowd. Of course, to fix the overall market you'll also need to break up all the existing megacorps in the process, and I wish you luck with that.

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

#352

Post by ahartmetz »

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.

I've noticed that many decent German TV productions (I'm talking about somewhat positive outliers here, like the best few Tatort episodes in a year) get scores of 6 to 7 on IMDB - especially the ones that are only shown in Germany. So, the Netherlands and Germany are pretty similar about that.

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

#353

Post by mattm »

crazygringo wrote: post #6

Goodreads wasn't "the future of book reviews", it was a good review site that might have innovated great new things or might not have at all. But regardless, Amazon should never have been allowed to acquire it -- it was incredibly anti-competitive. Amazon never wanted to do anything with Goodreads at all -- as demonstrated by the fact that it hasn't done anything. It was a purely defensive move to prevent anyone else…

It's not true that Amazon hasn't done anything with Goodreads....they have sunset their API.

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

#354

Post by gmiller123456 »

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 don't find the average rating very useful. I do, however, find reading 1 and 2 star reviews quite helpful.

It wouldn't be very helpful to read a review as to why someone thought Fundamental Calculus was better than Moby Dick. Without the star rating system, you lose the ability to filter on the reviews from people who think the product is bad.

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

#355

Post by mattm »

grecy wrote: post #295
crazygringo wrote: post #6

Goodreads wasn't "the future of book reviews", it was a good review site that might have innovated great new things or might not have at all. But regardless, Amazon should never have been allowed to acquire it -- it was incredibly anti-competitive. Amazon never wanted to do anything with Goodreads at all -- as demonstrated by the fact that it hasn't done anything. It was a purely defensive move to prevent anyone else…

> It was a purely defensive move to prevent anyone else from acquiring or partnering with Goodreads I think there's another angle you're missing here - Amazon wanted to stop paying so much in affiliate sales. At their size, they were easily taking in tens of millions a year from all the Amazon affiliate links. Now Amazon own it, they don't have to pay that out.

This is really all there is to it. I believe I recall reading that Goodreads was Amazon's largest affiliate.

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

#356

Post by Guthur »

The case in point highlights that this is not a problem specific to online media, it's just made it more obvious.

There is nothing different between how NSDAP whipped up a nation to go on a 6 year rampage across Europe than what's happening now. I've witnessed otherwise reasonable people justify the description of Russians as Orcs as a reasonable dehumanising racial slur in light of the Ukraine Russo conflict.

I like Iain McGilchrist thesis that we seemed that have become overly left brain dominated and so are starting to exhibit an increasing inability to process nuance.

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

#357

Post by cpncrunch »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #155

But Amazon is otherwise so good at rooting out fraudulent reviews!

Exactly. The same problem happens on amazon all the time. The only difference is that amazon shows who has a verified purchased the book, but still, it is very easy to review-bomb a book on amazon, and they do absolutely nothing about it. So, I don't really see this as an issue with goodreads per se. It's just a general problem with moderating user generated reviews, or at least it's a problem with large companies such as amazon moderating (or not) those reviews.

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

#359

Post by edgyquant »

abc_lisper wrote: post #102
weego wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodreads was the future of aggressively biased people shouting their opinions to other people with no discernable value in theirs over others. Rose tinted view.

Can't tell your post is sarcastic or not. Good reads is a valuable resource, especially for avid readers - without it I wouldn't have read as many good books as I did.

I really don’t think so. It’s been awhile since I was on there but there recommendations was the same thing you’d get anywhere (e.g. audible.)

Maybe the reviews were better, but I think in general the trend of trying to replace discussing things with people with an automated service or social network leads to a poorer result. I read a ton and have never used a recommendation tool to find them, I just read books, go to bookstores and talk to people about them.

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

#360

Post by maximinus_thrax »

karaterobot wrote: post #350

Librarything has always been better than Goodreads, with a better community, better leadership, a better mission, and a more confusing UI. You can import your library from Goodreads, or pretty much anywhere else.

Librarything is partially (40%) owned by AbeBooks which is an Amazon subsidiary. Spalding has the lion's share and I'm sure this matters for the direction of the product while he holds it, but I'm skeptical about the whole thing in general. It takes just one person to change their mind and the enshittification starts.

Also, see https://www.librarything.com/privacy

> Certain content that appears in on this site comes from Amazon Services, LLC. This content is provided "as is" and is subject to change or removal at any time.

Ugh..

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