Blogosphere engagement and librarything.com’s success
In the Wall Street Journal article Social Networking for Bookworms, reporter Aaron Rutkoff cites how librarything.com (a site that aggregates and shares personal library information) has become a minor phenom thanks in part to blogger engagement.
“Mr. Spalding’s book community has grown almost exclusively by word of mouth. Referrals from book-oriented bloggers have helped, but LibraryThing has grown mostly gradually. Mr. Spalding downplays his user numbers, pointing out that fewer people make frequent use of the site than have registered. “The numbers are probably misleading,” he admits. “It is very, very easy to join.”
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If anyone wishes to see my modified version of LibraryThing, go to my Vaspers the Grate blog and look down my sidebar.
I “modified” it, meaning: LibraryThing displays something like 12 random books from the “personal library” you set up with them at their site. Then, if you have 30 books entered, it rotates randomly through them.
But I didn’t want that. I wanted to permanently display my 12 favorite and most helpful books, so I deleted some of my books, to make it exactly 12 in my personal library. That way, the same 12 rotate in position of display, but it’s always the same 12 books.
I have talked with LibraryThing owner about tweaking this product. I love it. I look forward to planned improvements.
Like most web tools, I don’t get much into the social media aspects of the service, I stick primarily to the web site service, the site enhancement and reader benefit, that acrues.
Heh—I’lll forgive your little usability error above. You link to a Subscription Only online article. Tsk tsk. Is there no free and open source of this information? Has to be. I’ll Google it now.
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