Do you know there’s a #fediverse alternative to Amazon-owned #Goodreads? #BookWyrm is a social network for tracking your reading, writing reviews, and discovering what to read next. You can follow and interact with users on different #BookWyrm instances and on #Mastodon. You can import from a Goodreads CSV export. You can create private shelves and curated lists. Join us at https://ramblingreaders.org or choose one of the other instances available #books #reading #bookstodon @bookstodon
Did Amazon always own Good Reads? Or did they acquire it?
@Gargleblaster @bookstodon @Remillard
Amazon bought Goodreads in 2013.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/02/amazon-purchase-goodreads-stuns-book-industry
@Gargleblaster @bookstodon @Remillard Amazon acquired GoodReads back in 2013
https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/28/amazon-acquires-social-reading-site-goodreads/
Just came across BookWyrm myself. If anyone could link a how to or something. That would be great. Right now, I feel like I am just cataloging books and no real discovery is happening.
Discovery seems limited to the books the people on that instance are reading. I don’t think much discovery will be happening on this site.
Can we interact with BookWyrm from kbin.social?
I honestly don’t know. I only just found out about BookWyrm from that post on Mastodon. Interestingly, the text of the toot was autoposted into the text box when I put the link into the link box. That text is from Rambling Readers! I don’t want to misattribute things.
That said, I think there’s a chance. It would probably show up in the “Microblog” portion of the magazine. That is setup to pick up on hashtags in the Fediverse and so if BookWyrm federated made a post that had a particular hashtag, it might show up here.
But in short, I simply am unsure all the intricacies of the fediverse here. I’ve really only interacted with Mastodon up to this point (and it’s gone well)
@Remillard @bookstodon @Rainbright Hashtags on #Bookwyrm don’t seem to work properly, unless that has been fixed. In theory though it ought to work as you say. Default hashtags for certain Bookwyrm events might be good too. I’ve not posted to Bookwyrm since following my account from kbin, so not sure how it works there.
I’ll have to give it some time and see how things shake out. There are some growing pains with the Fediverse but I’d love a Goodreads alternative.
@Rainbright @bookstodon @Remillard @confusedbunny I was looking for a Goodreads alternative because I kind of cringe at the thought of Amazon getting more of my data than it already has. I landed on #TheStoryGraph. While I haven’t had time to do a deep dive, I’ve been liking what I’ve seen so far. The export from Goodreads was pretty simple.
I don’t know if that’s the answer you’re looking for - It’s not part of the Fediverse - but at least it’s not making Jeff Bezos richer. #Bookstodon
@dbsalk @Rainbright @bookstodon @Remillard @confusedbunny Just to add another option. :)
I like Bookwyrm and Storygraph (use both because I too am on the hunt for a GR alternative) but am really liking Hardcover.app.
@jwilker @dbsalk @Rainbright @bookstodon @Remillard @confusedbunny I, too, use Storygraph, but I’ll check out #Bookwyrm
I’m on StoryGraph too (and BookWyrm), but I’ve been burned WAY too often by profiteers. GoodReads in particular is seared into my memory; their owners lied to users to get tens of thousands of free hours of labor out of us (to “save GoodReads from Amazon”), all while they were negotiating to sell out to Amazon! And then Amazon immediately started censoring and shadowbanning reviews to suit their corporate bottom line.
I’ve seen far too many great digital communities destroyed by greedy vulture capitalists. I’m done. If a service has a single owner - plutocrat or corporation - it automatically goes to the bottom of the list. I’ll stick with BookWyrm, thanks! It may be a little light on features so far, but I’d rather put my work in there and wait for improvements.
Giving it a try. Import is slow, but I have ~1500 between my read and want to read lists so I can’t blame anyone for that.
Edit: importing isn’t too bad, but constructing lists is brutal. It was bad enough on goodreads with the list view, but this is untenable. It appears the only way to do it is to manually search for every title you want to add.
