The New York Times Covers Zunafish?!?
I think I'm going to tear my hair out with jealousy. Today's New York Times has a gushy article about the media trading site Zunafish.com. Kindly look at the chart below, LibraryThing vs. Zunafish according to Alexa.
Update: WOW. That's a big bounce! Let's see if they hold on to much of it. Nobody ever holds the first-day bounce.
Zunafish is the long red line at the bottom. There are at least a dozen trading sites doing better. Heck, my ancient history hobby site is crushing them! Or check the blogs. Google Blog Search lists 2,235 blog posts about LibraryThing. Zunafish? Seven, five posted today! (They'll no doubt be more soon.)
Nor is Zunafish a totally new deal. They opened in January. As the NYT writes, "Mr. Bloom and Mr. Elias said that the circle of traders had been limited so far — they did not disclose figures." You're not kidding. According to Alexa, 4,570,852 web sites have more traffic. Four-million.
But, as the article states, they've raised $485,000. I guess that buys them a PR campaign. No doubt their numbers will spike now that they've landed the NYT article.
It seems so terribly unfair. Press should follow success, not create it. LibraryThing's traffic currently outranks booksellers Biblio and Booksense, all trading sites except Peerflix (eg., PaperbackSwap, Lendmonkey, FrugalReader, Bookins, SwapandSave, etc.), Amazon's AllConsuming, the much-heralded Basecamp.com, and on and on. And yet LibraryThing's press coverage has been largely restricted to The Christian Science Monitor's electronic edition and a piece in my home-town paper. Instead, LibraryThing's grown on word of mouth.
I know. The answer is to get funding and to hire a PR firm. Forgive me for being idealistic, but it shouldn't have to be that way.
Update: WOW. That's a big bounce! Let's see if they hold on to much of it. Nobody ever holds the first-day bounce.
Zunafish is the long red line at the bottom. There are at least a dozen trading sites doing better. Heck, my ancient history hobby site is crushing them! Or check the blogs. Google Blog Search lists 2,235 blog posts about LibraryThing. Zunafish? Seven, five posted today! (They'll no doubt be more soon.)
Nor is Zunafish a totally new deal. They opened in January. As the NYT writes, "Mr. Bloom and Mr. Elias said that the circle of traders had been limited so far — they did not disclose figures." You're not kidding. According to Alexa, 4,570,852 web sites have more traffic. Four-million.
But, as the article states, they've raised $485,000. I guess that buys them a PR campaign. No doubt their numbers will spike now that they've landed the NYT article.
It seems so terribly unfair. Press should follow success, not create it. LibraryThing's traffic currently outranks booksellers Biblio and Booksense, all trading sites except Peerflix (eg., PaperbackSwap, Lendmonkey, FrugalReader, Bookins, SwapandSave, etc.), Amazon's AllConsuming, the much-heralded Basecamp.com, and on and on. And yet LibraryThing's press coverage has been largely restricted to The Christian Science Monitor's electronic edition and a piece in my home-town paper. Instead, LibraryThing's grown on word of mouth.
I know. The answer is to get funding and to hire a PR firm. Forgive me for being idealistic, but it shouldn't have to be that way.
posted by Tim at 6:55 AM
62 Comments:
to be honestly blunt, get a new design with blue and white and arrows and round corners and stuff. LibraryThing doesn't look like the great site it actually is.
I agree. First impressions and all. I think I'll do that.
Well, Zuna fish is ugly as hell in my opinion. It looks like those sites they do just to park domains. I don't agree that every site should have the same looks (round corners and stuff).
Don't go too crazy with the design. Right now, LibraryThing is simple, elegant and easy to navigate. Form follows function.
I just looked at Zunafish. Anonymous is right - that's one ugly site!
I hope you're kidding....why would LibraryThing feel the need to compete with a trading site anyway? I thought it wasn't ABOUT swapping.....
I've grown very comfortable with the design of "our" site, and I think it's quite lovely as it is.
Have you written up your accomplishments as a press release?
I love librarything the way it is. The design IS elegant and makes me want to spend hours on WEEKENDS logging all my books!!!
Don't change anything without a long think. One of my favorite things about this site is the ease of use. Since I mostly use a very old and slow machine, the site's simplicity is the thing that makes it reasonalby speedy for me.
I think LibraryThing looks quite nice. Very appealing to a book person (the site's main market).
I checked out Zunafish yesterday, and it completely sucks. I clicked on CDs then Classical, and not a single Classical CD was listed. And yes, its design sucks, too.
I am pretty sure good and easy to use will easily beat one new york times article, in the long run. Especially since most of the world doesn't read or care about the new york times, for one thing. :)
bluetyson
I should say I have no particular animus against Zunafish. I'm on the side of any small web ap.
As previously announced, I'd love to partner with one of these sites. I'm completely vexes as to why PaperbackSwap won't return my emails. A larger site wants to send them email—what the problem with that.
Failing that, I think LibraryThing will at some point allow swapping. It'll be separate and option. (We discussed this once before.) And most of all, it will be free.
I don't think a site's looks matter as much as people think: del.icio.us was ugly as hell initially but that didn't matter to people who loved what the site did.
I kinda like LibraryThing's looks, and the fact that it does not look like a clone of every "Web 2.0" site out there really helps.
Well, I think it could improve a lot, but yes the intent was not to look like every other Web2.0 site. The name was an attempt too. Meebo, Kiko, Goowy... Have people seen the "Star Wars or Web 2.0" quiz?
http://www.cerado.com/web20quiz.htm
I think the main problem is the color. It looks nice on my laptop, at least to me. I should design for the CRT, however. It's better than the first color, aptly described as "perilously close to greige."
Anyone want to suggest a color scheme from another website. Warm browns and reds connote books to me, but I think they connote unprofessional to others.
Tim, I'll want my money back if you 'upgrade' LibraryThing to emulate Zunafish. ;-)
Be confident in your choices.
Your colors and layout are stylish and don't scream at me.
Check out the colors on Slowtrav.com, another classy site I enjoy.
I think the logo and colors are fine. Don’t make it look web 2.0 ~! Blech
Once thing you might consider would be to have the initial view of a given library to default to “graphical shelf” – or change the code so users could link the graphical shelf versions as well as the list versions. The graphical shelf – oddly - is one of my favorite parts of library thing – since it lets me browse though my collection by cover – something I can’t do with the physical library. And people tend to navigate by images more readily than text online.
But I think your day will come. The system truly is amazing. The times piece seems to be more concerned with funding, and the potential of swapping, and balh blah blah. Librarything is the kind of thing book lovers are going to stick with.
Slow travelling. Is that like slow food? It's a good idea. I'm not going anywhere, but I'm gonna remember that. Still, I don't find the style "grabs" me. Perhaps that's what people feel about LibraryThing...
As an artist who sometimes dabblees in webdesign, I have to agree that the color scheme needs work. I'll have a look around and see if I can locate a few websites that have good color schemes that might suit you.
Beyond color, you want: clean lines, simplicity, consistency, and ease of use. Mostly you have this down.
But the colors at this moment: day old oatmeal and koolaid.
"day old oatmeal and koolaid"
Shit. Are you in my kitchen now?
I'd love to have a design contest. But I'd be hard to judge, and I'd not like to do it, hate the results, and then have to tell people I'm not using it.
I can do prettier design, eg.:
http://ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0010.html
http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/dragons/
http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/monalisa/ (etc, etc)
http://mothboard.com/
At least I find it pretier. I just never hit my stride with LibraryThing. And, of course, now it's a rather large and complex site. Maybe if I just changed the top, and came up with a replacement for the green color (eg., on tag pages), or yellow (about.php).
At this point, I think the logo needs to stay the same. To me it connotes "the printed word." I think others find it fusty. Maybe I could have one of the words be in that old font, and the other in some gothic face. (Gothic meaning sans serif, not the Motley Crue typeface.) Or "Catalog your blooks online" could be in a different face...
There's a good site for looking at possible color combinations. Here's a link to one such combination, one that seems to me a possibility for Library Thing. You need some splashes of bright color for links and the like -- but you've also got the cool deeper tones reminiscent of old books.
http://www.colorcombos.com/combotester.html?cc_id=126
You'd have to overhaul your css file, and it would take some experimentation, but this (or something like it) would give you a new look with minimal trouble and no huge restructuring that would throw the daily users off their stride.
http://www.colorcombos.com/
combotester.html?cc_id=126
The long link didn't come through so I'm posting it this way. You'll have to put it back together.
Being as successful a LibraryThing without publicity seems to be better than getting all the visits through hype.
It's already a great way to find interesting titles and steadily improves as more people join and share their books. I really like it, strange colour and all.
...combolibrary.html
Wow 8-)
Tim could chose which of the 202 combinations he likes and we could vote on them ;-)
Pity there is something wrong with their links at the moment - the list shows some numbers, but if you chose one you actually get linked to another combination! (the link behind nr. 126 in the list goes to id=131 etc.)
There's always been a symbiotic relationship between investor-backed companies and the press. The investor backed companies spend their time getting press instead of tending to customers because they need to generate hype for their IPO. The press has a legacy psychology to cover companies who have a large number of employees and investment.
Craig Newmark didn't seek the press.
But then there's also something wrong with Tim's link ;)
Four w's in the buzz-link.
It's a good thing I didn't submit my child's name for vote... :)
No, life isn't fair. Didn't they warn you?
Tim, relax!
All it takes is one well-read journalist or blogger who falls in love with LT, and you won't know what hit you. It will happen soon enough.
And in the meantime don't make any wild decisions about the layout, it's so comfortable the way it is.
If you do feel so inclined, here's another great colourcombo site: Slayer Office
Cheers,
j.
Well, LibraryThing may get an investor, but I'm sure as hell not going to go the VC route. VC needs a huge return to make sense, and leaves you with a tiny percent, no control and one bad ticking clock. Besides, VCs have no passion for the business. I want an investor who reads.
Those Zunafish guys probably have 5% of the company each. The company needs to become a monster to make anyone any money. And the only way it can become a monster is by being a monster, and getting very very lucky. As someone said at Paul Graham's Startup Camp, people sound so cherry about getting a round of funding! Hooray, I just gave up 90% of my company!
At present, I'm favoring Lendmoney and a British site BookHopper.co.uk. Lendmonkey's design irks me, but they're nice guys and one just had a baby—solidarity among baby-makers! BookHopper was nice enough to email me, and that counts for something... Paperbackswap? Zilch.
My favorite VC quote also comes from Paul Graham's startup camp (Paul Graham's the LISP author who started Viaweb and now mentors small companies). Anyway, the quote, projected on the big screen, opened the lecture on VC:
Venture capitalists: Soulless agents of Satan, or just clumsy rapists?
Jaydot. I like the colors, but they don't say "information" to me. Think if the "related tags" were in one of those pinks. Those pinks are for promotional copy, not information. See what I mean?
Then again, on a "real" screen, who knows.
I found out about LibraryThing on Newsvine, and have written about it and linked to it in my column there as well. You may want to get an account on there if you haven't already; I can send you an invite if you need one.
Click "random base colour"! Slayer Office is about combinations, the base colour is your own choice.
http://www.colorcombos.com/grabcolors.html
LT
You can grab the color scheme of an URL you like, add or delete colors, chose 'get the link' and you get the URL for your color combination - that we then can vote on ;-)
Tim ...
I just forwarded an article to you that I'd run across about the Tribune Corp. doing some financial shuffling so that they could invest in some new web businesses ... at least they're rooted in paper and ink!
- BTRIPP
Get on Oprah. Ha Ha Ha
No really, why can't you cut a deal with Amazon to link up with their Listamania or link any other large bookstores. I work in a large bookstore and you would not believe what people will spend 25.00 on.
davisfamily
I don't like the header that much... I could make make a new one if you want. Not with "blue and wihite etc." but just something that adds a little more consistency to the overall impression. :P
The rest of the design is ok, though.
Oh, something else - you know what the LT design brings to mind now, to me? Google.
I don't think that is a bad thing. Simple, fast and easy.
Given I can't stand tuna, Zunafish is a stooooopid name.
:)
bluetyson
Put me down for one who prefers simple and clean. As for the colours, well why not have a number of different colour schemes and let the user decide which one they want (alternate css files).
There seems to be very little correlation between long-term success and being championed by the press in a website's early years. But if you do want some press, it may be worth contacting the editor of the books section of papers rather than the general features editor.
Dear Tim,
Before you moan and groan about not being noticed in the _Times_, you might fix the search engine for people's individual libraries.
This morning I typed in in a number of ways the names of the Brontes, and was repeatedly told I had no books by any Bronte, or I got 300 books among which were the 12 or so I think I have by the Brontes. Which I know by going over to the shelf.
This is not atypical of the search engine.
Chava
Tim, Just stop it ;-)
...there are toooo many tabs...
"Tools and Toys"! "PSSSTT"!
My screen is not wide enough and they are piling up. Incorporate them into our profile page if you must.
stop your whining, and live your life..
Chava: Yes. LibraryThing does need a character overhaul. Indeed, there are many features that need work. But it's a very feature-rich application. I note, for example, that Zuna doesn't return any results for Brontë, only Bronte, and that their new release are all "by [blank]." :)
It'll happen. But it may take a whille.
PS: I love Shashdot's term, "anonymous coward."
Anonymous said...
to be honestly blunt, get a new design with blue and white and arrows and round corners and stuff. LibraryThing doesn't look like the great site it actually is.
______________________
Yeah, that's what it is. I can't think of a single sight (cough, google) that looks simple and doesn't have a whole bunch blue, and white, and arrows, and round corners.
"It seems so terribly unfair. Press should follow success, not create it"
I agree, but that tremendous blip on Alexa shows that the NYT is a great place to get a write up reaching interested readers.
I think the best way to pick out new site colors would be to model it on a well designed BOOK cover. Also, I'd change the link colors. They are so important here, but the blue is kind of glaring.
I might also consider a sort of library scheme - dark green, oak or mahogany with gold.
The answer needn't be "get some funding and hire a PR firm".
dystopos asked if you'd written a press release - have you?
sure, your core skill/preoccupation is coding and dreaming up new features...but you seem literate...it's not that hard to write a good release!
where is the Media tab on the front page, where journalists can get ready-to-publish info about LT?
(some - not all! - journalists are a bit lazy, and will cut'n'paste your well-written release into their story).
if you really want media coverage of LT - and you know why you want it - you can generate some on your own.
- from an LT journalist/public relations worker/writer...
Have you thought about partnering up with SwitchDiscs.com? I've traded there for the last month or so and love it. They don't have books yet but maybe you can help make that connection?
First of all, why are you even complaining? Zunafish is a media trading website, while you are a "library site."
Secondly, you say that "Press should follow success, not create it." So how would you suggest that all of the small businesses in America should even get off the ground?
Lastly, you also say that "The answer is to get funding and to hire a PR firm...but it shouldn't have to be that way." Of course it does. Do you expect great things to happen if you don't pay up or put any work towards things? I would not like to live in your world where you don't have to work for things, but they get done for you if you are successful.
Thank you for your anonymous comment. Truly Slashdot has it right in how it labels those.
In fact, while Zunafish did manage to--effectively--buy a NYT article, they would have been better off investing that money in programming or UI design. As their growth chart indicates, press mentions and $9 mil. in VC funding don't "work" anymore.
That you equate PR with "put[ting] any work towards things" is, I'm afraid, the problem. PR doesnt' make your site better. It's not work at all. It *promotion*. And promotion doesn't go any where if there isn't work underneath. And promotion is increasingly pointless in today's media environment.
If millions in VC money and a big PR push leave you with an Alexa rank of 62,000, you've failed. It's time your funders realized that and pulled the plug.
Hey, look at who made TIME Magazine's 50 coolest websites... http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222531,00.html#zunafish
Too bad your Alexa rating is currently 50,000...
I don't particularly give a crap about either Library Thing or Zuna Fish, but I can tell you this: jealousy is a pernicious thing, LT. As someone once said, “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.”
That said, your take on P.R. is almost too naive to be believed. A smart company makes the best product they can make, and then PROMOTES it. That's about the most basic premise of business there is.
And finally, what makes you so certain the Zuna Fish people *didn't* put in hours (or years) of hard work? How can you purport to know what they did? It's so...arrogant of you. Unless you know these folks, who are you to say they didn't flat-out kill themselves on creating their site? It sure looks pretty well thought out to me.
Geez--you really need to think about where all your anger is coming from...
The web changes the dynamics of promotion. Your users will always be better promotion than traditional outlets. If your site is really great, traditional promotion can help. If not, it's virtually powerless. Go down the list of sucessful web companies. Google won by promotion? YouTube?
Rather than starting with Pets.com, take Zunafish as an example. It has had both a NYT and a Time magazine profile. That's about the best you can do short of a trip to Oprah. But the MSM exposures haven't translated. The blogosphere is virtually silent. Traffic spikes crazily, then swiftly falls. The thing's a dud, to be precise. A dud that has bought its way into press coverage.
If your press brings you visitors, but they don't stay, you would have been better off spending the PR money on development. PR to a bad site just gives you lots of people who will NEVER come back. Better to have loyal users and a lot of potential.
Other swap sites are doing much better. Paperbackswap is a tiny company with minimal press sucess. Bookmooch appears to be one just with zero press. Both are going after a tiny piece of Zunafish's market--books. They're also creaming it.
Some graphs and charts. LibraryThing (very little press coverage) vs. ZunaFish
LibraryThing vs. ZunaFish mentions
http://www.blogpulse.com/trend?query1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.librarything.com&label1=&query2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zunafish.com&label2=&query3=&label3=&days=180&x=57&y=6
Or look at page view statistics. Visitors to Zunafish get the hell out as fast as they can:
http://www.alexaholic.com/librarything.com+zunafish.com+lala.com
Here's a series of other URLs you can try, and then compare against LT, or the swap sites that are working
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&scoring=d&ie=UTF-8&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.zunafish.com&btnG=Search+Blogs
http://www.technorati.com/search/www.zunafish.com
http://www.blogpulse.com/search?query=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zunafish.com&offset=0&operator=&start_date=&end_date=&sort=&max_results=&x=0&y=0
http://www.feedster.com/search/zunafish
So, in sum, you're wrong. You don't make a great product and then promote it. You make a great product, and make it better and better with all your might. If you don't, all the promotion in the world isn't going to help you.
So Zuna Fish *bought* its way on to TIME Magazine's "50 Coolest Web Sites" list? Is that really what you think, in your heart of hearts? Or did they maybe come up with a brilliant, well-executed idea, which one of the nation's most preeminent news sources recognized as such. You are SO bitter, buddy. You really need to start thinking about why, or this is going to be a very difficult life for you.
Brilliant ideas are beloved by users, not reporters. Love might be ineffable, but metrics are not.
Digg/Reddit are a good parallel case, see http://paulgraham.infogami.com/blog/ .
Oh look, reach has gone down to 10/1,000,000. Two *titanic* press events, and a reach of 1/100,000 internet users. If I were an investor, I'd demand Zunafish do what Kiko did--put the domain up for auction in hopes of getting a nickel on the dollar.
First of all, anyone with any web sense whatsoever knows that Alexa rankings are a joke, and completely unreliable for sites outside of the top 500. Here's a typical thread--maybe you can learn something from it:
feed://www.mattcutts.com/blog/thoughts-on-alexa-data/feed/
And second of all, make that THREE huge accolades for Zuna Fish. First, the NY Times loved them. Then TIME Magazine named them to their "50 Coolest" list. And this past week, PC Magazine named them one of their Top Web Sites of 2006.
Keep on ripping them, Tim. It seems like the more you do, the sillier (and angrier) you look.
Alexa is a very basic, flawed tool. But the piece you cite doesn't support your position. The objection raised there is that Alexa ratings can be manipulated upward by unscrupulous SEOs. That certainly hasn't happened to Zunafish. The same goes for Korean sites--for some reason the toolbar is more popular in Korea. And it tends to underplay sites with Ajax. (Lala, for example, has only one "page," so it stands to reason their Alexa numbers undercount.)
So, Alexa is a flawed tool, useless day-to-day and to be understood critically at all times. But it's hardly uselss.
A good cross-check are mention metrics.
Here, for example, is Blogpulse's count of the number of times Zunafish is mentioned--a burst with the NYT followed by near silence.
Technorati tells the same story:
http://www.technorati.com/chart/zunafish?chartdays=180&language=n&authority=n
You could get much the same story by counting entry dates in Google Blog Search or Feedster.
http://www.blogpulse.com/trend?query1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.librarything.com&label1=&query2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zunafish.com%2F&label2=&query3=&label3=&days=180&x=17&y=19
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