In conjunction with today’s announcement of a new wireless Sony Reader, the electronics giant also launched a literary clone of Twitter called Words Move Me. The site falls into the category of viral social marketing—there are links to the Sony Reader website and eBook store plastered on every page—and was pobviously rushed out before it was ready, but it shows some promise as a niche micro-messaging network centered around sharing quotes from books.
The idea is very basic. You paste in passages up to 255 characters long, add the book title and author, and post it to your stream. You can also add tags. You can follow other people, or they can follow you. When you click on an author, a book title, or another user, you see more passages from that source that have been shared on Words Move Me. So far, so good.
The problem is that right now it is a self-contained site. Facebook and Twitter integration are coming “in phase 2,” I’m told. If you can’t share your favorite book passages with your existing network, this isn’t going to go far. But it’s coming. Also, the site does not auto-populate book titles or authors, which it should be able to do at least for books in the Sony eBook store or in Google Book Search (which is a Sony partner).
Avid readers love to share quotes, but that is not the only things they like to share. Quotes and passages are all good things to share, and can serve as hooks for people to come back and explore further (and mabe even buy a book).
The concept reminds me of iWise, which is a way follow famous people through their quotations. It’s Twitter for dead people. And iWise lets you Tweet out your favorite quotes, or get random ones right in your Twitter feed. There is an opportunity for several more focused micro-messaging sites, but they cannot exist in a vacuum.
…”and was pobviously rushed out before it was ready”
just like this article
ahhhhh you BEAT me to it thats EXACTLY what i was gonna day
This is the dumbest idea I have ever seen. Who approves these things?
This is not a bad idea. Not executed very well…but a GREAT idea.
My biggest gripe with Twitter is the character limitation. Its rather difficult to condense thoughtful quotes into 140 characters without out losing nuance. 255 still wont be enough for longer, more complex quotes, but it certainly beats destroying a citation of the beautiful english language by converting it 2 txt spk.
Why the black background? It blows. I’ve never been a fan of blackbackgrounds.
Racist.
haha!
Long and ugly name (domain) too.
I checked out the site and think they did a really good job with it.
Just sounds like sony is copying twitter. Ummm what’s the legal term for that?
xeroxing it?
This will attract a huge game-changing audience. Wait, sorry, I meant to say a teensy meaningless audience.
Sony’s “Word Move Me” sound useful… could even encourage interest in books….
Well, so many clones!
Lol, last thing I expected is Sony to do this.
Pathetic.
Domain name is to long. The site not bad.
Yeah, yeah “Sony’s dead, blah,blah,blah, if it’s not Google or Apple, it’s crap, blahblah,blah” . You don’t need to post, we know you drank the kool-aid, geez.
Great idea, but it’s all about integration. I guess maybe they’re just using the site to see how it goes before they launch it in a space that will attract more users.
Sony: Not All Words Allowed!
http://ebooktes...ds-allowed.html
A great example of how insane time constraints and technical limitations (lack of integration with established social networks & Sony ebook store) can kill what was actually a very good idea.