Here is the full text of a email interview with Bookmooch owner, John Buckman. Anyway, my previous review of the sight seems to have caused a small piece of offence. Apologies for this, I'd like to think i'm a champion of bookmooch, but perhaps I was over analytical. Anyhow the interview John sent me.
Sorry for the delay, I've been in the middle of a press tour, which
is ending in a few days. I'm in Tokyo currently.
I'm a little saddened by your negative review of BookMooch. The abuse
rate is miniscule (two abuse reports for 10,000 books traded). Not
sure what is "not clean" about "the look".
Q.1/Do you feel www.bookmooch.com is the next social networking
phenomena of the social net working site? I feel your the www.myspace.com of literature?
Fundamentally, BookMooch is about trading books, not a social network
site. Everyone has books they'll never read again on their
bookshelf, and BookMooch simply helps unwanted books find places
where they are wanted. Many side-effects come out of doing this,
such as meeting people with similar book tastes, and in general,
seeing far more books now that the cost is so low, but the main goal
is bringing a huge unused resource back into the world. However,
features such as book lists, discussions, reading groups are all
planned and will come out in the next few months.
Q.2/ The use of Amazon and librarything API really add to the
usability features of your site. Whats you opinion on having access to these
API'S?
Without amazon, BookMooch would have been quite difficult to do, so
it really is a wonderful thing that they make these available.
LibraryThing came later, and Tim (the founder of LibraryThing) and I
share philosophies and greatly admire each other, so we have deeply
integrated our two web sites, and will continue to do so. I believe
a big part of Web 2.0 is understanding that users are in control, and
that users want single-purpose web sites that are optimized and best
for that use, not Web 1.0 web sites that try to capture the user and
provide all features they may ever need.
Q.3/ would you consider using more tag's for the way you describe
books? A large selection may give people a better idea of what the book is
about or a better of looking more serendipitously[hope i spelt correctly]?
Yes, of course.
1 comment:
Perhaps John would get better reviews if he didn't allow his team of administrators to bully and intimidate members, new and established alike. This admin team has engaged in flagrantly dishonest behavior, mooching books under false pretenses, then reselling them at a large profit. Probably not such a good thing for a site's public image.
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