Goodreads

Goodreads is a social network for book lovers in the same vein as Book Army or Shelfari. It is a place where members can come together to: rate books, create a virtual library (aka book shelf), create a book club, collect quotes, etc.

After creating an account and testing it out, I would have to say it's just as good as the latter two w/ a lot of nice potential. For those of you that are familiar w/ social networking sites (and if you read this blog, I'm sure you are) the interface will be exactly the same: create an account, edit your profile, add your books, review, etc etc.... nothing dramatically different to write home about.



However, there are some nice features which makes Goodreads stand out from these other sites. For example, you can sign up for your friends reviews which is nice. Also, you can create clubs which is another neat feature.

The issue that I have is, adding friends seems to be problematic as I couldn't find out how to search for friends unless they had a Yahoo email account. If that is the case it really does create some difficult limitations.

I suggest checking Goodreads out by clicking here.

Book Army

Book Army is a new site (beta) that is very similar to Shelfari. It's a web 2.0 site where people can go to collaborate on books.

Those of us familiar w/ social technology will have no problem jumping into the mix. Register an account, search for friends, select your books, rate/review, join groups, view videos, etc etc.....

If I had to compare the two, I would say Shelfari has a nicer look to it, and might be a tad more user friendly. I'm not trying to suggest that BA is hard to use, but the overall look to it seems to get a bit cluttered at times.

However, there are some nice features to Book Army that sets it apart from others. For example, there is a button by each book w/ a plus sign. Click on that and it will take you to Amazon to purchase the book. Also, there is a word bubble icon next to each book that you can click on which will bring you into a chat discussing that specific book.



All and all Book Army is a great new site that readers/authors alike will have a great time collaborating on!!!

Give it a look by clicking here.