Comments on: Goodreads Raises Angel Round To Help You Find That Perfect Book

By: TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » BookRabbit sets out to “scrobble” bookcases

Mon, 19 May 2008 17:44:55 +0000

[...] managed to get to 650,000 registered users, near profitability and even a found of financing in their first year since launch. And LibraryThing was partially acquired in 2006 year by ABEbooks. Then there is [...]

By: Pleasure and Pain — People you may know

Pleasure and Pain — People you may know — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:00:58 +0000

[...] that I assumed the sites were owned by the same company. Not the case, but it turns out that one of Goodread’s angel investors, Michael Berch, is the founder of [...]

By: Joseph

Joseph — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:08:52 +0000

Congrats Otis. Keep plugging away!

By: Otis

Otis — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:47:44 +0000

Hey All,

Thanks for all the interest in Goodreads! I’ll do my best to address some of the questions:

- No we don’t spam, although there was indeed a recent blowup about our competitor Shelfari - we blogged our position on the Goodreads blog. We are also looking forward to competing fairly, now that its mostly blown over.
- Facebook has been lots of fun, but we’re more focused on Goodreads.com. Facebook accounts for less than 5% of our members.
- In response to people wondering how we did it, I think our success so far has to do with 2 factors: the first one is that we’ve built successful web products before. The other is that Goodreads is built around a very compelling subject, that is near and dear to the hearts of many people. We’ve gotten many people who’ve signed up and said “I’d never be caught dead on MySpace/FB/etc, but I love books so much I couldn’t resist this!” How many social networks can you really invite your mother to?
- Tim’s clarification is right - we’ve had 10 million books added, as opposed to reviewed. Although the bulk of those do have ratings.

happy holidays!

Otis

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:02:10 +0000

I think “Xinil” should have revealed he runs a semi-competitor, as do I—I’m the LibraryThing guy.

Congrats to Goodreads and Otis. Now that Shelfari’s spamming has brought it a severe traffic reversal—according to Alexa anyway, I look forward to a fair fight with a talented team. That said, the different strengths, models and demographics between LT and GR make it more likely that the really sharp fight is between Shelfari and GoodReads (with Anobii in the mix, maybe).

Quick points:

1. I want to underscore the point above about data portability. LT, S and GR all allow you to export your data. The Facebook aps—Visual Bookshelf—invariably do not. Closed gardens beget closed gardens, I think.
2. I want to cast some doubt—Otis, feel free to tell me I’m wrong—on the idea that GR has 10,000,000 books reviewed (above). That’s counting a rating as a review—something the site does too. It’s semantic, but I think most people will think they actually have ten million *reviews*. That would be Amazon-size numbers.

By: CAR

CAR — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:49:41 +0000

That is an impressive registered user list.

By: Tech Coast Review - GoodReads Bootstraping Pros

Tech Coast Review - GoodReads Bootstraping Pros — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:23:38 +0000

Good Reads: Book Nerds, Social Networking, Success…

A Los Angeles based company has just announced the reception of an angel round of funding. TechCrunch reports that the funding is in at right around $750,000. The main idea of the company is to have not only book reviews but to base the book reviews …..

By: Q

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:15:35 +0000

Why do people take Internet ratings seriously? They’re even more flawed than TV ratings. They measure a completely non-random sample of malware-infested computers. It’s entirely unscientific and ridiculously biased. Worse, it’s biased in unknown ways.

By: Ballmer

Ballmer — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:09:27 +0000

Don’t worry MS is watching carefully!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

By: Xinil

Xinil — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:34:39 +0000

Someone needs to explain to me how they’re generating money and or got 650,000 users. Seriously, look at their Alexa rating. It’s rather pathetic, and yet they’re doing ‘well’ and ‘growing’ according to TechCrunch? Anyone care to shed some light on this?

By: Q

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:43:19 +0000

I really like the fact that they let you export your book list. They understand that my data is my data. I know that the time I spend on the site will not be wasted by being locked into their system so they can make money off of me.

By: Alexaa

Alexaa — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:54:37 +0000

I am a passionate goodreads user.
As an answer to the question further up - no spamming is happening here, and that’s possibly why people like it.
There are discussion boards, featured authors and lots more and once you start looking around, it’s tough to leave again.
Precondition to like the site though: you have to like books!

By: AndrewB

AndrewB — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:14:55 +0000

Re: Amazon having their eye on GoodReads… they already invest $1 million into Shelfari in may of this year.

By: Annie

Annie — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:09:50 +0000

This whole conversation line has made GoodReads very intriguing, and now they have reached me, thru you! Advertising is a funny thing!! I am going to have to check out this site as I have been searching for a book that is out of print. Can you download books electronically to your IPod or better yet, your Amazon Kindle? I am sure Amazon is going to want a taste of this somehow.

By: Everett

Everett — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:38:01 +0000

@ #19- Good point Rob.

@ #20- where did you stumble upon it? Facebook?

By: facebookjunkie

facebookjunkie — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:24:44 +0000

It’s funny because yesterday I was looking for a book that I wanted for Christmas, and I stumbled upon GoodReads for the first time. Somehow I managed to spend an hour’s time on the site - and I’m not even a bookworm. And today I’m reading a TechCrunch article on it.

I think GoodRead has a lot of future potential.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:09:14 +0000

@Everett - have you ever wondered how easy it was for Barnes and Noble to replicate what Amazon was doing in 1996? Oh - wait - they did replicate it - only it didn’t really go anywhere. That’s one of the biggest reasons why startups even exist - because big corps just can’t do it and even when they do it, they do it wrong 95% of the time.

By: really?

really? — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:38:10 +0000

I’m sorry, but 650k registered and only 100k monthly uniques. This is a dreadful ratio.

By: Everett

Everett — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:17:05 +0000

Neat idea but the first thing I thought was how easy it would be for Amazon to replicate it? It already has a similar rating system for books, for people to post comments etc… I’m curious what the barrier to entry is for this startup! Congrats none the less.

By: AnonTroll

AnonTroll — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:13:17 +0000

Anyone knows how they make money currently to be near-profitability?

By: PH1

PH1 — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:24:33 +0000

Near profitability? I didn’t log in, but I don’t see any ads anywhere? How are they generating money?? I know they haven’t put up any money…but still.

By: ITrush

ITrush — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:04:09 +0000

That’s very impressive!

Nhick
http://www.itrush.com

By: micfo.com

micfo.com — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:36:19 +0000

Amazon might have an eye on this.

By: chrisco

chrisco — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 10:54:03 +0000

Agreed

By: YDRIVE

YDRIVE — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 10:46:11 +0000

Certainly.. they’ve done a good job.. let’s “agree” at that