Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by Nemo_bis » Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 11:36 AM UTC

sn9 wrote: post #465

Nemo_bis wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that's Amazon too, right?

As far as I can tell, Amazon got a 40% share in LT when they bought AbeBooks. I don't know that a minority stake in a company counts as "that's Amazon" in any meaningful sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibraryThing#Ownership

Amazon can shut them down any time by cutting their access to data, AFAIK.

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

#492

Post by pentagrama » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 1:44 AM UTC

Nemo_bis wrote: post #401

pentagrama wrote: post #322

I hope no corporation buys https://letterboxd.com which is currently similar to the good old Goodreads but for movies.

Letterboxd is already owned by a corporation, Letterboxd Ltd. https://opencorporates.com/companies/nz/3628371

You are right

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

#493

Post by dexterdog » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:54 PM UTC

smcin wrote: post #490

dexterdog wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the founder that succeeded and got the sale is not the one building the new version. He is going off and re-doing an unrelated acquisition.

No, I pointed out that Goodreads' Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri did not go anywhere after the 2013 acquisition. They stayed, for years. Khuri is still there; Chandler continued as Goodreads' CEO till 2019. I was surprised neither of them left sooner than that to do anything new, in any sector.

Sometimes golden handcuffs are very comfortable because of the aforementioned gold.