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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

#441

Post by mtsr »

parineum wrote: post #398
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot expect a business that has 6 days of life left to wait for such an approval process. A homeless man that has 6 hours left to live in the cold winter often cant get shelter, because instead we are really concerned with caterting the entire fabric of society to fictiontion problems that might one day affect a mismanaged business.

Explain how that is related.

I’ll try to explain:

Clearly there are serious scenarios outside M&A where we accept terrible failures due to regulations. Why not accept some in M&A as well?

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

#442

Post by nl »

autoexec wrote: post #410
nl wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... mergers really do not only make markets less competitive at all! May mergers of huge companies often have negative impact. Firstly most mergers do not involve multi-billion dollar companies at all, secondly many mergers occur when one company is is trouble, and thirdly good takeovers increase distribution of the smaller companies brand. Good examples of successful mergers/takeovers like this include: Halotop b…

> Good examples of successful mergers/takeovers like this include: How are you defining "good" or "successful" here?

There hasn't been a significant negative backlash, availability of the products increased, and revenue increased for the acquiring company.

The improved availability via better distribution is a win for consumers and the increase in revenue is a win for the company and shareholders.

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

#443

Post by nl »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #406
nl wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... mergers really do not only make markets less competitive at all! May mergers of huge companies often have negative impact. Firstly most mergers do not involve multi-billion dollar companies at all, secondly many mergers occur when one company is is trouble, and thirdly good takeovers increase distribution of the smaller companies brand. Good examples of successful mergers/takeovers like this include: Halotop b…

Most acquisitions by Proctor & Gamble That is quite a broad statement. Can you explain more?

In the FMCG space that P&G is in most of their takeovers improve distribution for the company that is being acquired, and P&G generally seems to prefer to leave the brand and management of the company alone.

I'm sure there have been some that haven't been successful, but most that I'm aware of have gone very well.

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

#444

Post by Zampa »

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 just give you two books that you've read and you tell me which is better. Do this loads of times and eventually you have a solid ranking of every book you've ever read. Aggregate everyone's rankings and you have a much more robust system then "please rate this book out of 5 stars".

We've done exactly this with Flickchart - https://www.flickchart.com - presenting the user with two movies at a time and letting them choose what, in their opinion, is the better film. We then aggregate everyone's rankings to generate a combined chart of the best films of all-time that's always in flux and changing.

We take into account each user's total number of rankings (refinement), and the total number of movies they've ranked (breadth of knowledge). We also use time as a factor - given that something that just came out has had less time to be "an all-timer" than something that has existed in the world longer and had the time to be experienced by more people.

We created this way back in 2009 and are currently building the next-generation of it on a modern web stack. This new iteration is also more modularized so we can expand more easily from just movies to other domains (books, games, music, TV, etc.).

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

#446

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

mtsr wrote: post #441
parineum wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how that is related.

I’ll try to explain: Clearly there are serious scenarios outside M&A where we accept terrible failures due to regulations. Why not accept some in M&A as well?

Admittedly, I read the other comment as a whataboutism. This explanation seems to help.

I think one could argue that the business failure is likely to affect more people, therefore it’s a greater impact. Still, I ultimately agree with this stance (in the context of business survival, not personal); failure is an inherent risk of business.

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

#447

Post by CalRobert »

athst wrote: post #364
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.

Amazon bought Goodreads in 2013 - if you had interviewed after the acquisition, you'd have encountered Amazon's style of interviews, which is much more professional and better than the experience you describe.

I wouldn't have minded getting some equity before the purchase, though!

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

#449

Post by karaterobot »

maximinus_thrax wrote: post #360
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…

Do you think either of those facts affect the site in any way? I'll be honest, it just sounds like problematizing to me.

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

#450

Post by datavirtue »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #411
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…

> ban all M&A Let's think through this. Company A wants to buy Company B. M&A is banned. 1. A pays B's owners $X for all IP and other properties of B. 2. B fires everyone. 3. A hires whoever they want out of B's former employees. A "ban" will simply not work as long as your country has a concept of property rights and ownership.

So require an employee vote?
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