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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

#211

Post by carlosjobim »

teamspirit wrote: post #22
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…

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.

> Unfortunately that's exactly why so many startups get bought.

Everything that gets bought gets sold as well. The founders of the companies are willfully and eagerly selling the companies they created. Who are you to ban it? Then you have to chain them to their desks and force them to try to dedicate the rest of their lives to the business.

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

#212

Post by BaseballPhysics »

weego wrote: post #89
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…

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.

You mean like what you're doing right now?

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

#213

Post by meepmorp »

floren wrote: post #191
meepmorp wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still IPOs, isn't there? Maybe it cuts down some of the stupid money going into tech, too, which wouldn't be the worst thing. And, hey, if the business is successful, you own part of a successful business.

A decade+ of acquisition as the default "exit" (and the idea that you have to be driving for an "exit" in the first place) made people straight up forget how companies normally work, apparently.

Seriously, why not just do something well and make a living from it? I've seen the word enshittifcation plenty lately, and it strikes me that the focus on exits and payouts is a big part of the problem.

I feel old and you goddamn kids better be off my lawn by the time I get back with the shotgun.

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

#214

Post by matthewfcarlson »

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 hasn't done nothing with it. Not nearly as much I'd like but when reading a book on my kindle, it's easy to hit the button to mark as currently reading and progress updates as you go through the book.

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

#215

Post by garfieldnate »

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…

As I recall, there were arguments at the time saying that it would be good if Amazon did nothing with it. People wanted Amazon to leave the product alone and not mess with it. And I still feel that way. What would you have wanted them to do with it?

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

#216

Post by koboll »

kunalgupta wrote: post #177

I don’t think amazon gas touched their UX much since 1998 so it’s not like Goodreads is receiving unpreferential treatment

Here's what Amazon.com looked like in 1998: https://web.archive.org/web/20060522143937/http://www.amazon...

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

#217

Post by bstpierre »

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…

See https://www.criticker.com/explain/ -- it works sort of like what you're suggesting. You rank movies from 0-100, which is different from rating them. Your percentile ranking scores are compared to other users' rankings, and then it can suggest movies that it thinks you will rank highly.

IMO the real problem with something as subjective as books or movies is that even completely honest, well-reasoned reviews are going to be all over the map. My review of a Pride and Prejudice movie is going to be maybe 3/10, but my wife would give it 7/10, while we have the opposite reactions to something like The Hunt for Red October.

I don't care about reviews from experts or the unwashed masses. I don't even really care about reviews that much -- I'm more interesting in ratings from people who like the same kind of stuff I do.

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

#218

Post by ims »

goodthrowreads wrote: post #199
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?

hi i worked at goodreads and this comment is giving me gell mann amnesia. ask any engineer there, this is basically true in the sense that amazon drastically professionalized what had been a deeply fly by night company. the way software was written and product cycles were done pre acquisition was hilariously bad. the reason goodreads still looks so ancient today is that even a decade of amazon engineers trying to sal…

Seems like the existing user base, reviews, and lists were the main source of value. I don't want to be "that guy" but I'm curious what made it so hard to rewrite some or all of the CRUD aspects?

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

#219

Post by jacquesm »

sigstoat wrote: post #209
kortilla wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still go bankrupt and company buys the assets without employees ever losing pay. Many bankruptcies work this way.

this sounds like it was dreamt up by a bunch of lawyers trying to get themselves more work. there's a lot more paperwork and bullshit involved in going into bankruptcy than just being bought out.

> there's a lot more paperwork and bullshit involved in going into bankruptcy than just being bought out.

Not necessarily.

In fact, based on my experience I'd wager that in the bulk of the cases a bankruptcy would be far simpler from a paperwork perspective (but harder on the creditors).

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

#220

Post by doh »

dopa42365 wrote: post #111

80% of reviews being "got the ebook for free before release in exchange for a very honest review" or "here're my 10000 words thoughts on spoiler spoiler spoiler" and overuse of goddamn inline gifs everywhere made the review section unreadable. It's more like a social network with gamification of book reviews. Looking at a random book: 4.36 stars, 74 ratings, 28 reviews. Release date: 18. July 2023 (in 15 days) No com…

Imagine if Goodreads (or similar) only allowed ratings for unreleased books if the publisher submitted the ebook into the system. The system then embeds it into GPT4 and if one wants to submit a review they have to answer a question (or multiple) about the book to verify they actually read it.
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