Groups update / 23% librarians
Update: The number of users in groups has almost doubled, but the Librarians who LibraryThing is standing firm at 22%. This is looking more and more like the true percentage of users who are librarians. I find this stunningly cool. Oh, PS: important new message display features on the way.
After forty-eight hours, we're up to 270 groups.
714 people have joined at least one group. Even niches like Medieval Europe (18 members) and and Baseball (5 members) are reaching critical mass. Librarians who LibraryThing is the largest, with 169 members. This suggest that of LibraryThing users—or anyway it's most active users—23% are librarians—take that, MySpace! 169 librarians can't be wrong!!*
With that fact in mind, we need to reiterate that LibraryThing isn't morphing into some horrible commercial or hook-up site. The amazing success of groups is testimony to a pent-up desire to relate around and discuss books on LibraryThing.** Reviews and profile comments weren't enough—not enough by far. The forums we're working on will extend that. But we haven't forgotten the cataloging side, and will continue to improve our data and data models, expand our library horizons, and provide richer information for your catalogs.
Users have written 1,222 messages, which means Robyn and I need to release the "real" forum functionality soon! While we work on the cake, I added some frosting, RSS feeds.
* According to the ALA, there are 136,738 librarians in the United States alone. So, if 23% of LibraryThing's 61,000 users are librarians, only 10% of librarians are LibraryThinging. In fact, it's probably much less than that, as the librarians tend to stay and participate at higher levels.
** Not to mention the various families and suchnot putting their individual collection up mostly for searching purposes.
After forty-eight hours, we're up to 270 groups.
714 people have joined at least one group. Even niches like Medieval Europe (18 members) and and Baseball (5 members) are reaching critical mass. Librarians who LibraryThing is the largest, with 169 members. This suggest that of LibraryThing users—or anyway it's most active users—23% are librarians—take that, MySpace! 169 librarians can't be wrong!!*
With that fact in mind, we need to reiterate that LibraryThing isn't morphing into some horrible commercial or hook-up site. The amazing success of groups is testimony to a pent-up desire to relate around and discuss books on LibraryThing.** Reviews and profile comments weren't enough—not enough by far. The forums we're working on will extend that. But we haven't forgotten the cataloging side, and will continue to improve our data and data models, expand our library horizons, and provide richer information for your catalogs.
Users have written 1,222 messages, which means Robyn and I need to release the "real" forum functionality soon! While we work on the cake, I added some frosting, RSS feeds.* According to the ALA, there are 136,738 librarians in the United States alone. So, if 23% of LibraryThing's 61,000 users are librarians, only 10% of librarians are LibraryThinging. In fact, it's probably much less than that, as the librarians tend to stay and participate at higher levels.
** Not to mention the various families and suchnot putting their individual collection up mostly for searching purposes.
posted by Tim at 6:14 PM
44 Comments:
I think the groups are wonderful! I'm having a great time talking with other book lovers and learning about new books to read!
Possibly, or just the fact that many other books are shared by two. It only gives the first X shared books--the X being determined by a complex algorithm involving the number of users and the heat in Denver--not all of them. I expect as more users join, more books will show up as shared, and they will be increasingly salient.
baggas: Of course. We're working on it.
I love Library Thing. I browse other people's catalogs then goto booksfree.com to order them. Works perfectly so far...
This Portuguese librarian loves the groups, and I've been following the discusions over at Librarians who LibraryThing group with great interest. I hope to learn a lot from them.
And I've been pimping this site to everyone I know, so hopefully the members will continue to grow.
Hey, my comment disappeared.
OK, it was a bit long, but still... was it deliberately removed, or is this a Blog bug? (It was ~2 comments below the one by baggas.)
Also, if it was deliberately removed: why, please? Too verbose? Or am I asking for too much nowadays? ;-)
Is there a way to close down groups if they prove to not catch? While everyone's enthousiastic now, I can see a month down the road some will likely prove themselves to not be valuable.
Gabriel -
There is an option for the person who created a group to delete it.
Any chance of a wishlist feature coming soon?
I know it's been mentioned before but with the groups I keep finding more and more books that look interesting and it's hard to keep track of them all. A quick link on the work's page to add it to a wishlist would be great.
chamekke: Please, I would never remove a message from you! I don't even remove spam unless it's totally obviously and unredeemably so.
Wishlist: Soon.
Thanks, Tim. I didn't think you would have deleted my message, even if it was a bit yakkety ;-)
In short: I proposed a Tags section that would show the tags shared by group members. It could go on the Group Zeitgeist page, or perhaps even on the Group Profile page (below the RSS feed boxes).
chamekke ("anonymous" because I'm writing from work and can't remember my Blogger login)
Thanks on the RSS feeds. Appreciated. I look forward to the feed for comments.
I was just browsing the Librarian group. Read the first few messages. Now wondering if the year I spent shelving books in my local branch library for $0.70/hr (2 hours a day) back in about 1956 or 1957 qualifies me for membership??
THANKS for the read/unread and 'jump to first unread'! I've so wanted their like the last day or two...
Tim (et al)...
It appears that the Google Group is "eating" any attempts I make to start a new topic (posted one last night that never showed up and another this morning that's gone missing ... one time it took TWO WEEKS for a "new topic" of mine to show up there!), so I thought I'd try here.
Aside from the message problem in the Groups last night, it looks like the "shared books" lists are screwed up. In the Chicagoans group, for instance "Typee: a peep at Polynesian life" (held by 6 users) is showing up as the #1 book, while "Madame Bovary" (held by 12 users) is at #6 ... and both the weighted and unweighted lists have the same books in the same order. Needless to say, it looks broken, and I was hoping that somebody could check to see if this is, in fact, in need of some fixing!
- BTRIPP
I see a pattern ... the list of groups is getting so long and some of the group names are either whimsical or have the key word later, rather than earlier, in the name, so that a person won't notice the original group when they subsequently create another (identical) group.
I did the same thing earlier. I was aghast that there wasn't a Shakespeare group, so I created "Shakespeare Shindig" only to find out, via a message, that there was already a group called "The Globe" (I was scanning for the Bard's name, not his theater).
I've since joined the Globe, because they were there first.
It might help, however, if, when creating a new group, that one would put the key word up front in the group name.
Also, is there an easy way to combine groups without losing any already posted messages or members?
How does one join a group? I can find no directions for how to join a group?
Elinort
We can't search all fields in our libraries anymore?
:(
Sorry. I turned it off--message on the Google Group--to work on the speed of it. It was either too slow or so fast that it "got in the way" of everyone else's requests to the server.
> message on the Google Group
How about an additional message on search.php? ;-)
Having trouble posting in 'What Are You Reading Now'. We need a page 2 or something. Thanks
"With that fact in mind, we need to reiterate that LibraryThing isn't morphing into some horrible commercial or hook-up site."
Yeah, Tim. You really need to work on getting those hook-up features in place. I suggest starting with an "Is my library hot or not?" voting sy stem.
I'm not sure how the fora will be implemented, but it seems that the messaging feature of groups will be unneeded if there is a forum for each group.
In that case, what function would a group serve, except to provide a forum?
'What function would a group serve...?'
There will be group members who never want to say anything in the forum. Being able to see easily who has similar interests *or* libraries (because people will join groups they are interested in even if they don't reflect their ink-and-paper libraries) is useful - better than even the 'special sauce' recommendations. Picking up on what other people read and talk about is a big part of finding new books to read, for me at least.
"In that case, what function would a group serve, except to provide a forum?"
This is from my post. I'm asking, based on the guess that each group would have a subforum of its own.
"Being able to see easily who has similar interests *or* libraries (because people will join groups they are interested in even if they don't reflect their ink-and-paper libraries) is useful - better than even the 'special sauce' recommendations. Picking up on what other people read and talk about is a big part of finding new books to read, for me at least."
This is the purpose I was assuming the group subforums would serve.
In groups, I would recommend a "Recommended by group members" instead of "Most commonly shared books". Thanks for your efforts!
At LibraryThing there is no "instead" :)
Good idea, however. Should this be a general recommendation feature, or should users be able to recommend TO a group?
Bug Report:
If you go to a group's site via the "Complete Group List" sorted by "recent," the group list will revert to an alphabetical listing when you go back.
A bug or a feature? I'm not sure. I suppose it could be disconcerting if you go RIGHT back, but remembering it over a longer time? I'm not sure.
Basically, I'm just trying to check out what groups have formed in the few days since I last logged on, which make the "recent" sorting very convenient. It doesn't have to stay sorted that way for hours, but it would be nice to have it stick in the 30 seconds to 5 minutes that it takes to peruse a group.
ExVivre
The groups are a great feature! I would love to be able to edit my posts because I keep forgetting to do the touchstone thing! (so far, posters who notice they've made a typo tend to correct it in another message). And it would be nice if I could jump to my last post and read only the messages coming in after that.
Ok, I'm seeing new groups that have related tags, related links and related groups, but I can't see how to add any of those to new or odd groups. Are these trial groups (they seem popular!)?
Aquila
Tim,
You're right,users be able to recommend TO a group.... I have learned much about books in areas I thought I knew well.
Also may I suggest new entries are at the top to avoid scrolling in active groups.
Thanks!
Shiloh
Ok, so now when going to a group the threads of message posts are listed in a grouping - which is great, but when I click on the subject line, it returns me to the same page?
Is this just a functionality glich because it is being changed on the fly? Help!
Thanks, Jeremy (abductee @ LibraryThing)
Ditto! How do we get into the message boards? I'm stuck in a loop! it's really quite amusing how many times I'll keep clicking to no avail.
Aquila
Thanks for the quick fix! Wouldn't have commented except I just started a Liberal! group - LibraryThing seriously kicks ass! - abductee - Jeremy
Wow, and there are the new topic boards. Cool!
Will we be able to merge several current groups into one group with different topics do you think?
Aquila
I *love* the new interactive touchstone panel that you folks added in groups. In particular, I like that you can search around for the correct link. Great work!
Somehow I can't find how to make my list alphabetical by author. How??? Esta1923
And so we bring one of the most annoying things about flickr and other web2.0 type sites to librarything, group invite spam.
Even with comments turned off on my profile, I still get them.
just what we needed.
Hey. Good point. If you have comments turned off, they shouldn't happen. I'm sending this to Robyn, who will do her magic.
Tim
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