Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Goodreads Recommends

How many of you belong to Goodreads? If you write recommendations for books, you probably post your reviews on Goodreads. About six million of us do.

Now Goodreads is using those recommendations to predict what you might want to read, according to an article on Newswire PR Today.
 Goodreads has almost six million members who have added more than 190 million books to their shelves and mark more than 100,000 new books “to read” each day. On average, members have 140 books on their Goodreads bookshelves.

Combining multiple proprietary algorithms which analyze 20 billion data points, Goodreads better predicts which books people will want to read next.
You may be wondering what algorithms Goodreads uses. According to the article, they analyze the reading history of people, how books fit into their lives, the connections between books folks are reading, what the topics are, what people like and dislike, even how they categorize books.

They analyze all this and more and come up with recommendations that are “tailored” to each reader/member of Goodreads.

Interesting. And a bit Big Brother (not the reality show, but the reality of “someone” knows everything you do and think). What do you think? Is it great having a company be able to tailor book recommendations by knowing tons about you? Or not?

21 comments:

  1. well, we're giving them the data so they're going to want to do something with it. i don't mind. I don't like that if you like the recommendation it automatically adds to your account though, LOL. I only add things to mine that I actually own or to a specifically designated wishlist if I don't.

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  2. Helen, as you know, I love social media and the internet. But lately I'm becoming more and more nervous about how automated everything is becoming on the net - I can use twitter to log into docbank (or a million other sites), Goodreads now analyses my reading; Blogger & Facebook change their formats with every new dawn ( or so it feels like!) and Amazon tells me what I want to buy...Orwell was right. Big Brother is everywhere. I wonder how difficult it is to remove my internet foot print...
    Judy, South Africa

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  3. Judy, I have a feeling removing your foot print at this point is impossible.

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  4. My books are so varied in genres, I wonder what they would come up with!

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  5. I'm not sure they know "tons" about the readers. Aren't the Goodreads Recommendations based ultimately on your previous "likes" and "dislikes?" I"m not sure about its accuracy, but if taken lightly for what it is, I like the idea, promoting dialogue and further reading.

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  6. I'm on Goodreads, but I use it to post reviews. I don't do anything else. Perhaps that's why their recommendations to me are usually of books that don't particularly interest me. Guess they don't know enough about me yet. I wonder if there will come a point where they do targeted advertisements.

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  7. They haven't tried to sell me anything, they just proposed me a list of book similar to those I have read and liked. Made me research some new writers, I love it.

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  8. I guess this doesn't surprise me. I do post my reviews on Goodreads but I have to admit that I really don't pay attention to recommendations from any source, except for bloggers and publishers! My reading schedule doesn't have much leeway so I really don't have time to fit something in that wasn't planned for.

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  9. I looked at mine but since my reading habits have changed over the years (even though I listed old books as read) it didn't really match up well. Plus, I like to read reviews before making a decision.

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  10. Sounds about right as per # of books on our shelves.

    I can't fault them one putting together stats on who is reading what. I do the same on a much smaller scale on my blog with stats. That's what they're there for. We, or at least I, can't help but extrapolate based on what I see on my stats. My mind just moves that way with bit of info. I want to make sense of it, put it in some sort of order.

    I think most people look at patterns. I'm not disturbed that places like Goodreads does the same. I'm the one who provided them with my bits of pattern pieces.



    Sia McKye's Thoughts...OVER COFFEE

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  11. I post my reviews on Goodreads from time to time. I'm not sure about giving out extra data to them for them to recommend books. My reading taste varies so I'm not sure how helpful it would be.

    Mason
    Thoughts in Progress
    Freelance Editing By Mason

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  12. I joined Goodreads over the summer. My shelves are in a sad, sad, sad state of disarray.

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  13. Goodreads is just another one of those social networks that I can't figure out ... honestly, I haven't spent much time rooting around the site, but what little I have, I couldn't really make heads or tails out it ... but then, I'm socially awkward.

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  14. Some people will fit their predictions but the less mainstream types won't fit. Why? Because there are people, like me, who read anything and everything, or are given the job of reading a wide variety of books that no algorithm could predict, not even if they included my review scores. It's all about the writer and not the algorithm that chooses books for me, and I have a very wide range of preferences that grows exponentially every day.

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  15. Guess that depends a lot on how many genres one reads.

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  16. I think Goodreads is helpful to writers to a certain extent in that it gives us some publicity.
    I offered ARCs for their giveaway program for my latest romantic mystery release THE TRUTH SLEUTH.
    Close to 1000 people responded.

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  17. My shelf is such an odd mix I bet I confused it.

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  18. I'm okay with it. I like Goodreads and should be spending more time there interacting with other friends.

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  19. If it's anything like the Netflix picks for me, they would be way off base. I can't figure out why if you usually rent British Mysteries that gore and paranormal would be a good choice for me unless I'm missing something. It's all a little scary.
    Ann

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  20. I have a mix of genres on my Goodreads list, too. I don't go on often, except to post reviews. I figure if an author is going to send me a book and I like it enough to review, then I should try to promote it for them. So I post the review on Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, and my blog (if it's available on those sites). But I don't pay much attention to what Goodreads recommends to me.

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  21. I just joined Goodreads and haven't become very familiar with it yet, but it sure does sound a lot like Big Brother. I agree with Judy's comment that it's getting quite creepy. All I have to say is good luck to Goodreads figuring out what I plan to read next because I'm all over the board in what I read. And their recommendations won't make a difference to me, just like Amazon's recommendations don't either. I'm glad you posted about this. Thanks.

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