Readernaut: Social Networking for Book Lovers (Review and Beta Invites)

Social networking concepts can be broken down into two categories: 1) General social-networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace or 2) Social-niche sites such as Flickr, Twitter and Newsvine. The former category often serves as a catch-all for activities which occur within the latter category. Flickr photos and tweets, for example, are often cross-posted as content to facebook.

The problem with trying to jump into the first category with a new offering is simple supply and demand: Facebook and Myspace supply all the demand. The vast majority of digital socialites have already set up camp at one or the other (or both) and aren't particularly looking to pack up and try something new. Just ask Virb.

The social-niche, on the other hand, is wide open. Those with programming skills and a concept can capitalize on any number of possible ideas, and it's not even out of the question to improve upon -- and pirate the members of -- existing concepts. (Nevermind that Pownce, recently purchased and dismantled, suffered partly due to the massive popularity of Twitter. While the two concepts weren't necessarily similar, Pownce was never able to shake the perception that it was a Twitter wannabe.)

Enter Readernaut.

1. Brainchild of talented web designers / programmers? Check.
2. Built upon impressive / cutting-edge web technologies? Check.
3. Narrow focus which promotes a functional / enjoyable user experience while dodging conflicts with broader social-networking interests? Check.
4. Intriguing aggregation of content and member stats for number nerds? Check.
5. Funny sounding name? Check. (It could have been worse. Rdrnaut?)

There's more, of course. At this point, Readernaut is still trudging through a public beta phase, a staple of niche-networking which allows developers to 1) generate content 2) work out bugs and 3) fine tune the user experience before opening the flood gates.

On this front, Nathan Borror has done a great job of funneling feedback while slowly whittling away at the initial shell. The core concept remains unchanged, but several new features have been folded in, including book lists and functional "power" tags.

The concept is simple: Every member has a column. Member home pages are comprised of timelines, which are essentially a history of activity. Timelines can display various categories of filtered content depending on user-specified options.

So, a typical member will begin by adding books into their library via the search feature. Readernaut utilizes Amazon's catalogue to pull information about books and the searching works dynamically, offering suggestions as you type. I began by adding a few of my favorite books from my existing home library, rather than adding every book I own. I've built-up my library with newly-purchased books and a couple of books I hope to purchase.

Because it's a social concept, adding friends is a major component of the experience. Readernaut offers the option of checking your Flickr or Twitter friend lists to see if they also happen to have a Readernaut account. It is then possible to "follow" existing members and if that person follows your account as well, the relationship is upgraded to "friend" status.

Once friends and books have been added, the default logged-in view is the ever-changing book timeline; any activity relating to books in your library will aggregate here. (This includes content from non-friended members.)

The real power of Readernaut lies in the ability to sort this default timeline according to user-specified criteria:

• Book Timeline: Recent activities pertaining to the books in your library.
• Your Timeline: Recent activities performed by you.
• Friends' Timeline: Recent activities performed by your friends.
• Everyone Timeline:The whole enchilada.

The above options will filter information chronologically in relation to Readernaut members but can be further filtered by type of activity. So, if the timeline is filtered by Friends' Timeline:

• All: No filter applied. All friend activity will be displayed.
• Progress: Only friend activity pertaining to book progress will be displayed. (So and so has completed 21 of 250 pages.)
• Notes: Only notes about books by friends will be displayed.
• Comments: Only comments made by friends will be displayed. (Notes are about books, comments apply to members.)
• Lists: Only lists of books created by friends will be displayed. (A series of books in a user's library which fall into a specific category. Horror, Young Adult, Guilty Pleasures, etc.)

This second round of filtering is all about content, and Readernaut wouldn't be very useful as a social concept if activity were limited to creating an online catalogue of books. (It'd basically be a repeat of the incredibly cool-looking, but mostly lifeless Version 1.0 of the Delicious Library application.) With that in mind, the first basic step of adding books serves as the foundation for all other activities.

To that end, every book in your library has a status. That status will likely change over time, but a starting status must be chosen as the book is added into your library:

• Reading: This is an "active" status in that any book being read can be updated as progress is made.
• Finished: Owned books which a member has finished reading. This status can be chosen or will be automatically entered once the "active" status of reading is updated to the last page of the book.
• Plan to Read: This is a "passive" status in that the user owns the book but is not currently reading it.
• Reference: This is an owned book in a "perma-active" status meaning that it isn't ever meant to be "finished" or read in typical novel fashion. A user may pick it up and browse from time to time.
• Wishlist: Books that are not owned, but which a member would like to own. The option to buy these books is provided via a link to the amazon.com listing for the book in question.
• Abandoned: Books which members have started, but have given up hope on ever finishing.

Regardless of status, it is possible to write notes about specific books and to add tags to both notes and books, so long as they are in your library.

Notes are user-generated comments which can range from simple thoughts which arise while reading a particular passage from a given book (in which case it is possible to "tie" the note to a specific page) to expansive reviews.

Tags are a typical user-generated content aggregation concept which readernaut applies to books and notes separately. In other words, it's possible to tag a book when adding it to a library, and then utilize different tags when writing a note about a specific event or character from the book.

Initially, all note tags on Readernaut were created equal. Eventually, a small set of tags were isolated and designated as labels:

• Comment: A comment about a particular concept or passage from the book.
• Review: A general review of the entire book.
• Quote: Quoted passages from the book.
• Spoiler: A note which might spoil the book for those who haven't read it.

These tags were singled out because 1) they can be useful in the visual presentation of notes in a timeline and 2) they provide functionality. For example, an optional setting can exclude all notes with the "spoiler" label from a user's timeline.

As each member is provided a column, it is also possible to view member-specific timelines in order to filter the content of any given member. Columns also offer other user-specific information:

• Books: All of the books added to a given user's library. Can be filtered by book status.
• Lists: Any lists created by a given user.
• Notes: All notes written by a given user.
• Tags: A tag cloud created by a given user, based on tagged books and notes, and which can be used to search that user's added content.
• Friends: Friends of a given user.
• Profile: Biographical information specific to a given user, including a limited set of statistics regarding notes, tags, books, etc.

As with most social-niche concepts, "how" a given member utilizes the features is going to vary from member to member. I don't catalogue every book I own, but it's possible to do that. There's a lot to explore, but Readernaut is successful at this early stage for two reasons:

1. Participation and functionality flows naturally from the first simple act of adding a book.
2. The concept is not only narrow, it's casual. Leaving for a week and dropping back in doesn't detract from the experience.

These primary settings just scratch the surface. As I mentioned earlier, all of this aggregated content provides interesting insight into what people read, what people abandon, and how many people read which books. For example, currently, the "most read" book is 1984. Interestingly, 1984 is also on the "most abandoned" list. It's possible to see information about the books which have been "most..." ...finished, ...currently reading, ...plan to read, ...wish to buy and ...abandoned.

All of this is potentially vital information on a social site about discovering new books. Why buy a book that most people abandon? On the flip side, someone may give a book a chance based on its "most read" status, and so on. Beyond the obvious functional uses, aggregated statistics culled from existing user-generated content is the driving force behind the social-web. (Readernaut will have to move beyond this early beta stage before this information will offer much in the way of insight. As of right now, it's limited by the limited number of members and "web design" books, for example, are understandably over-represented.)

User settings are accessed by clicking a "widget" icon at the top of the screen. Options are fairly limited but it is possible to choose from several color schemes and install (drag) a "bookmarklet" for one-click adding of books from amazon.com as well as turning on or off email notifications when being followed and spoiler prevention.

There are some features that I'd still like to see added, such as the option to have my "status" on books I'm reading auto-tweeted to my Twitter account. I'm notoriously lazy about tweeting and a social-niche site such as Readernaut could kill two birds with one stone. Something along the lines of...

brianericford has read 66 pages of "East of Eden"

....as I update my Readernaut status would be nice. (Notes wouldn't translate quite as well, given the 140 character limit imposed upon tweets vs. the open-ended length of notes.)

The login page lists "your book club" as a feature and thus far, there's no real functionality dedicated to setting up and executing a really great book club with friends. I think the foundation has been laid to implement something that would work really well and facilitate chapter by chapter discussions, but it's not quite there, at this stage.

As this is being written during the beta stage, it hardly seems fair to go too deep into functionality issues, as 1) most of the niggling issues I had early on have been addressed and 2) Nathan has been really good about turning constructive criticism into site improvements. (Going so far as to tweet new features and overall progress: Follow @readernaut.)

Feedback is requested and appreciated (and, to be fair, expected) of beta members, and is facilitated by an inviting reminder to "send us suggestions, bug reports, or just say hi..." at the bottom of every page.

So, to sum up: Looks great, functions great, and only stands to get better.

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