WSJ does the LibraryThing
We hit the Wall Street Journal's Quick Picks section, with a nice four-paragraph article about LibraryThing by WSJ reporter Ian Mount. In contrast to most pieces, this one puts emphasis on the cataloging side.
The article is very welcome, but its infelicities show how complex LibraryThing's "story" has become. The books in LibraryThing, the books in the libraries we search, and the books in the stores that integrate with us are all different. It's hard to get that across right. When you add the social side of LibraryThing, the story becomes impossible. And that's not including the Early Reviewers program, the 700+ LibraryThing authors, the 39+ libraries using our data, the libraries of dead luminaries and on and on. Something we're about to unveil will add a whole new dimension to the site.* We're getting hairier.
The home page needs a redo. I want something that functions as both a gateway to new users and a springboard for users already on the site. I'm contemplating a shift of emphasis, toward "the world of books." Somehow we need to communicate that LibraryThing isn't a lightweight catalog program or a way to "friend" bookish people. It's this ocean of stuff—books you have, books you don't, book reviews, people who read books you do, conversations about books, authors showing off their books and their libraries, book stores, publishers, etc.
To me, the basic bargain (or "value proposition," in web design speak) is "catalog some books and this teeming ocean lies before you." But I can't think of any way of expressing this without sounding glib and insincere, eg., "LibraryThing: The Ocean of Books!"
It would be interesting to ask members to design the home page. I'm guessing there would be little agreement on what to put there and what to leave out. There are members who only use LibraryThing to catalog, and don't even like the whole "work" level. There are members who only use it to chat with other book lovers. There are even people—we know who you are, librarians!—who use the book-recommendation features frequently, but have never made an account.
I suppose these are problems you want to have...
*We're developing a feature which, if I could, I would put after collections. But we agreed to do something many months ago and one of the titans of the internet has us by the ear over it. Seriously. We're not going to have lunch in this town if we don't finish it.
The article is very welcome, but its infelicities show how complex LibraryThing's "story" has become. The books in LibraryThing, the books in the libraries we search, and the books in the stores that integrate with us are all different. It's hard to get that across right. When you add the social side of LibraryThing, the story becomes impossible. And that's not including the Early Reviewers program, the 700+ LibraryThing authors, the 39+ libraries using our data, the libraries of dead luminaries and on and on. Something we're about to unveil will add a whole new dimension to the site.* We're getting hairier.
The home page needs a redo. I want something that functions as both a gateway to new users and a springboard for users already on the site. I'm contemplating a shift of emphasis, toward "the world of books." Somehow we need to communicate that LibraryThing isn't a lightweight catalog program or a way to "friend" bookish people. It's this ocean of stuff—books you have, books you don't, book reviews, people who read books you do, conversations about books, authors showing off their books and their libraries, book stores, publishers, etc.
To me, the basic bargain (or "value proposition," in web design speak) is "catalog some books and this teeming ocean lies before you." But I can't think of any way of expressing this without sounding glib and insincere, eg., "LibraryThing: The Ocean of Books!"
It would be interesting to ask members to design the home page. I'm guessing there would be little agreement on what to put there and what to leave out. There are members who only use LibraryThing to catalog, and don't even like the whole "work" level. There are members who only use it to chat with other book lovers. There are even people—we know who you are, librarians!—who use the book-recommendation features frequently, but have never made an account.
I suppose these are problems you want to have...
*We're developing a feature which, if I could, I would put after collections. But we agreed to do something many months ago and one of the titans of the internet has us by the ear over it. Seriously. We're not going to have lunch in this town if we don't finish it.
Labels: books are broken, ocean of books, press, press hits, wsj
posted by Tim at 11:58 AM
24 Comments:
Model your homepage after iGoogle, allowing people to put whatever LT info they want on it widget style. Allow users to create widgets that display info using an LT API and are available in a directory.
That gets complicated quickly, let me tell you. Maybe if various services all generated RSS we could make a single RSS solution.
Well, the person mentioned Google, and I will say, consider Google's homepage: probably the most famous in the world, and it is a lesson in extreme simplicity.
Something which considered that as a template (which you may or may not want to do) could look like this:
LibraryThing: Then 3 links
Add some books to your catalog (to catalog page)
Discuss with others (to groups home)
Sign in to Your profile (to profile page) - if logged in - or "Create an account / Log in" if not
And these are all little things, clustered around a big text-field input box that one enters a name of a book in, and the button next to it says "See what others are saying about a book" - and it takes you to a (new) page with all the reviews, all the talk/group discussions with that book touchstoned, etc.
Just random thoughts...
No, no, no. Forget iGoogle.
Flickr should be your model. As I'm sure you know, there are two home pages. One for non-members, one for members.
So if you're not a member, you can see at a glance that Flickr allows you to:
"Share your photos. Watch the World".
You do this, apparently, because Flickr allows you to:
* Share and stay in touch
* Upload and organize
* Make stuff
* Explore
It would be relatively simple for you to design an LT version of this.
"The world's largest bookclub".
* Connect with authors and booklovers
* Catalogue and organise your books
* Talk about books and their authors
* Get personalised book recommendations
* Explore 23 million books
Each of these links should go to an appropriate page of the tour.
Flickr has stats on its home page. That's probably worthy emulating, too. Once you have hi-res covers, these could display, too.
If you're serious about users designing the home page, then launch a competition. I'd enter.
I admit, I kind of like idea of the "word's biggest bookclub." It took me a while to explore LT because I didn't see why I'd want to catalog my books. It's a lot more fun than I thought.
I'd keep the focus on books as much as possible - authors are fine folks, but their books are more interesting. (I upset some authors saying that at a mystery con once.)
I'm a writer myself, but I'd hate for LT to become another promotional venue.
Poor LT is groaning under the weight of features and success. Vox clamantis in deserto: Maybe it's time to return to the core cataloging functions, clarify, simplify, strengthen, and streamline them, and then rebuild outwards again.
> "The world's largest bookclub".
> * Connect with authors and booklovers
> * Catalogue and organise your books
> * Talk about books and their authors
> * Get personalised book recommendations
> * Explore 23 million books
The tagline is very good. I hope * Catalogue and organise your books will be first, though.
(Just down on the web a lot lately. It feels like years since the Internet has seen any conceptual progress. The web is becoming like a giant distributed copy of Microsoft Word, so complex that it's a nuisance to use. Typical example: I have to open Safari to post this, since Blogger is broken with Firefox; but Safari doesn't have my saved passwords, and who the heck knows what my Blogger password is, since I haven't had to type it in months.)
-RJO
Speaking strictly for myself, I hope LT doesn't turn into some feature-laden monstrosity, or worse, yet another excuse to have a "Friends List." I hopped on board for the cataloging, suggestions, and information about books. I like that the community aspects, while available, aren't shoved in my face.
If I were interested in trudging through MySpace/Flickr-style banter and promotional blurbs, I'd have joined Goodreads. To be honest, the idea of any of that becoming the norm on LT makes me really wonder if paying for a subscription is a good idea.
If you're after a model to follow, stick to KiSS.
I have to agree with the others before me. Keep it simple and non frou-frou. Booklovers will appreciate it. Those who don't . . . well we don't really need them.
LibraryThing is like a beautiful poem... like a wonderful painting.LT is what it is to each of us.
I stumbled LT and my heart beat faster, I signed up and got it. There is a voyeuristic pleasure of sorts from looking at the books on someone else's shelves. There is an intrinsic joy when you find a new author, or even just a new book, one that you would not have found otherwise. A pride of showing some of wht your own shelves hold.
LT is what it is to each of us. Defining it might just spoil the it...
As for a new homepage...model after nothing... breathe in LT and let it come.. let it be LT . Look what you have already done!!!!!Your page should be LT through and through, and have others wanting to model after you.
Oh.. and thank you for the many hours of pleasure that I have already had, and the many more to come.
Kath has it exactly right. LT is LT. It shouldn't be patterned after anything. The fact that so many people find it so appealing for so many different reasons is indicative of its brilliance.
As someone who uses Google's front page as their default browser homepage I understand the desire for clean, simple, easy-loading web design. That being said, I guess I'm in the minority in thinking that the LT front page was always pretty simple and fairly unfettered---it told me what the site had to offer and only asked for a user name and password to join. Simple. At least it was simple and yet still attractive enough to get me to sign up within a hot minute. Then the site's wondrous virtues spoke for themselves and I was buying my lifetime membership within minutes of joining!
It's worked for 350K+ folks so I hope the design changes aren't too radical. :-)
I love the "world of books" theme. It seems that there is everything here about books except the actual reading of them. The "world's biggest book club" would be my second choice. I also agree with everyone who says to keep it simple. I'd have to agree with bookjones. That pile of books was all I needed to see to join.
Well, I just joined after reading the WSJ article. This is a fabulous site!!
I think the homepage is fine but I suggest you fix and add some features.
There doesn't seem to be way to get back to the home page after you left - all pages should have a home page link.
As a newbie about to enter hundreds of books, it would be nice to be able multiple select several books in the window instead of just one at a time.
Like iGoogle= iLT
Sites without RSS generation could be located in another frame.
As your team experiments with different homepage models, test them with users through a different link. Allow comments on that test page.
As always, good luck to your skilled team...
yeelstod, why do you want to go back to the front page? There's nothing there. Everything that's linked from there is linked from one of the tabs on all the other pages (well, except the specific examples, I guess.) Why are you finding yourself wanting to go back to the homepage?
yeelstod, clicking on the LibraryThing logo in the top left corner will take you back to the home page.
The "world's largest bookclub" angle wouldn't float my boat. I like being able to catalog and tag my books. Everything else is secondary. Nice, but secondary.
I suspect the many different features draws different people to the site and it varies with each user as to why they signed on, hence the dilemma. Perhaps focusing on the different ways to use LT would be a way to introduce people to the site.
I concur with celeste in being very cool to the whole "bookclub" angle for a tagline. I also agree that the primary goal of LT being an online app for cataloging should always be played up first and foremost. The fact that one joins "the world's largest bookclub" (at this point by default perhaps) is IMO, a tertiary aspect of membership. I guess I think of an imaginary litmus test whereby if all the "social"aspects of LT had never existed would I still have become a lifetime member within minutes of finding the site and the answer is a resounding, "Yes!" because of its infinitely practical sense and application for someone who has a lot of books. Very much in the same way I signed up immediately for the now-defunct online book cataloging site Singlefile several years ago for just it's ability to catalog my books online and the ease of use with nary a hint of social networking capabilities. R.I.P. Singlefile---I lamented its closing down and also think it kind of sucked how it didn't pro-rate and refund members for that year's annual membership dues the year it went under! But I am mostly over that bitterness now with my beloved $25 lifer status on LT. :-)
Has it definitely been decided that "What's on your bookshelf?" is going be permanently retired? I always really dug that tagline.
I'm interested that you're an ex-Singlefile member. They died before LT came on the scene and indeed it was even hard to find out about them—a couple of Wayback Machine pages were about all I could find. But in some sense they did it first.
I think of LT has "catalog your books" and THEN... Some people never get into the "and then" part. But by and large it's cataloging that blossoms into something more.
Tim:
Singlefile's closing was very the reason I found LT! In the fall of 2005 they sent word via email that the site was closing down operations at the end of 2005 (or maybe the very beginning of '06?) and also advised users to export our libraries in anticipation of that. I totally forgot about the close date and lost my opportunity to export my library---2000+ ISBN entries down the toilet. I went several months being p*ssed off at my slackerly behavior, not enjoying the prospect of having to re-enter my library in any fashion and then one night while investigating which software cataloging app I should finally just bite the bullet and buy I somehow found a link (prob. through a blog but can't remember) to LT. It was BEYOND fortuitous!
In terms of the user interface Singlefile and LT were quite similar in that all you had to do was type in an ISBN number and then click to add the book to your library. Additionally, you could also manually enter books. All libraries were private---no bookshelf voyeurism, no social networking functions, no tagging, and no comparing of library data, etc. You had to pay a annual membership dues of I believe $20 (can't quite remember). It had a very simple but lovely look about it's web design but then all it was doing was showing you your own library. The LT equivalent would be pretty much just looking at your LT catalog page---it showed you covers, authors, ISBNs and the like against a whit backdrop.
I don't care for the "World's largest bookclub" line, either. I know people join book discussion groups, and they call them "book clubs", but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear that phrase is a subscription mail-order outfit like Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, Readers' Subscription, whose primary function is to sell books. Of all the things LT has become, it isn't that, and I'd hate to have it suggested to the world (or even the portion of it that thinks as I do) that it is.
I like "LT's world of books" or "world's biggest bookclub" because I describe all of my online book sites to others as my "online bookclubs". Otherwise their eyes would glaze over.
I also would somehow incorporate the words "and more". I'd start the introduction as simply as possible (to lure in those that are interested). I'd highlight the cataloguing, the fora, and the recommendations (or tags) features under the main tagline. Then I'd highlight the Early Reviewers Program, the Common Knowledge function, the user's wiki pages, and other features under the "and more" tagline.
The initial interface has to be simple but enticing. I'm glad to see you doing this.
P.S. Please do something on your introductory page to direct authors newly joining LT to the LT author program and the author's group, but initially *away* from the fora. Thanks.
You might consider running a contest to select a new tag line. I'm with some of the others who liked "What's on your bookshelf?" But at the same time, I would love a contest.
My entry would probably be
"Read. All about it."
*We're developing a feature which, if I could, I would put after collections. But we agreed to do something many months ago and one of the titans of the internet has us by the ear over it. Seriously. We're not going to have lunch in this town if we don't finish it.
You seem to put everything after collections... but, Hey!, you'll get there. But if Chris doesn't get the iPod export up and running soon, none of you will eat lunch in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia ever again!
Jim
Honestly, I like it just the way it is.
It just needs a template / CSS makeover to make it prettier.
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