I like to keep track of the books I've read, but up til now I've just been using flat files stored hither and yon in various dark and unfindable corners of my hard drive. The system on bookhuddle is much, much nicer, themed lists integrated with the tagging system. I'm in the process of building up my lists. Tagging infrastructure makes this really easy, and in going through the process I've already come across (and tagged) several books that seem right up my alley. The ability to subscribe to other people's lists is key. Very cool app.
We thank everyone for the honest feedback, that is exactly what we are looking for. We understand that everyone has an opinion, a point of view, and a set of expectations and we appreciate you sharing yours with us.
Any company faces lots of challenges and constraints while pursuing its vision. Prioritizing and executing on the things that will get the company there are the hard part. We understand and accept that and are excited to try to create a great service to help readers discover, organize, and share book information.
Where do people learn to speak this way? Why can't you just be Bob and say things in english without using words like 'challenges', 'constraints', 'excited' and other such fluffy words?
Just tell me what I want to know and stop trying to market me a free product.
I'm a potential for your site, but your site does not seem like it gives me immediate value. I have simple needs:
1. I want an easy way to add books I liked
2. I want recommendations on new books based on those
3. I want to be able to recommend books to my sister (and only my sister), and I want her to be able to recommend books to me
It's not clear if your site does this, and it looks too complicated anyways, so I decided not to sign-up. I'm looking for absolute simplicity that does just what I want, and all other features are hidden away.
Thanks for your feedback. On Bookhuddle, you can easily add books that you like to your list, simply search for the book and click "add to list" and select the list you wish to add it to. You can also tag the book and tagging with one of the predefined tags automatically adds the book to the related book list.
You can also recommend books to anyone within or outside Bookhuddle, simply click on the "Recommend to friends" link on the book detail page or any search result page.
The Activity Feed is also a great way to discover books through your friends. When they interact with a book (write a review, participate in discussion, add to a list, etc), you find out.
You don't get it, do you? I can do these things by using email and notepad. But it's not convenient. It's the same with your site. It does not fit my intended usage, but does this as a side effect, and so your site is not convenient either.
And please stop talking like a PR or salesletter and start talking like a person.
Bookhuddle is a social network and book reference site created to help people discover, organize, and share book information.
With Bookhuddle, members can:
* discover new books quickly and easily (new releases, top seller, most recommended, most listed, recommendations from friends, updates through activity feed, and more)
* organize and manage their reading lists and personal library
* share opinions through reviews, ratings, discussion, run or join a book club.
A while ago I tried out various facebook applications to list books, but none of them make it possible to organize reading lists and subsets of your collection, and so on. If you plan on making a bookhuddle Facebook app, I think that would be really useful to a lot of people.
Also, you may have added this already but RSS feeds for users' lists or for all activity from a user, would be a great addition to this site.
That's in the plan. In the meantime, on Bookhuddle you can organize your books in lists such as read, reading, to read, favorite, and own, or create any number of lists to help you organize your books.
make a way for users to avoid seeing books that they already read. For me at least Amazon recommendation is pretty useless now, since for Science Fiction I already read all of the books that they recommend.
Go deeper into the categories. Amazon for example stops at Space Opera. But that's still a very large genre. Let users tell you what kind of features the specific space opera has. i.e. Alternate Reality? Space Battles? Technical Technology descriptions? You know REALLY research the book genres so that you can improve your recommendation system. Someone who likes light sci-fi will probably HATE technical sci-fi that spends 4 pages describing how a certain thing works.
Spend a few books to have nicer images made. I mean those 3 images really make the site look cheap.
This could be really useful in addition to the amazon reviews when book shopping. Looks clean, easy to use, and extremely responsive. Setting up an account to give it a test drive.
I don't like the design on the front page. You need to redesign the front page by starting completely from scratch and thinking minimal. This site looks like it was a barge where you just kept piling on whatever would fit wherever until you had a full page to launch. Don't show 5 new member photos on the front page when members don't add photos. I really don't like the hyperlink blue color that is on text that isn't hyperlinked.
Look. I'm sorry. It looks like you worked hard on it. And I love reading. But, it's 2008. We're almost a decade into the 21st century. I want to be able to take a batch of picture of my books bar codes and upload them and have it generate the list of my books automatically. Then, I want to be able to rate my books, easily, like on netflix, and get new recommendations based on that, and a list of local friends that might have the same taste in books. I want to say what books I would loan out, and be able to trade and loan books locally with other people who like similar books. I want it to suggest people and reading for book clubs automatically and well. Like "There are 20 people in your area we think would like reading The Cat in the Hat. Would you be interested in joining with some of them to read this as a book club?" You just don't have anything that seems compelling to me.
This just seems like something out of the 20st century. It's the 21st century. Go eat some psychedelic mushrooms and lie back and absorb that we're a decade into the 21st century. Vision, people. Is this really the best you can bring to the 21st century? All human history happened so you could create the 20 things on that front page that distract each other for my divided attention? Where is the vision?
"I want to be able to take a batch of picture of my books bar codes and upload them and have it generate the list of my books automatically. Then, I want to be able to rate my books, easily, like on netflix, and get new recommendations based on that, and a list of local friends that might have the same taste in books. I want..."
Fair suggestions, but who's to say that's what these guys are trying to be? From what I gather they're a meeting place for those who like to read. I was able to quickly gather that from their homepage.
To be fair, it sounds like you're taking up a different discussion (Founders' Vision and the Web 2.0 Phenomenon) with these guys caught in your crosshairs. The fact is, we don't know what they're trying to become. Maybe they'll evolve into those features you mentioned... it's believable. But they're nascent, and it's their job today to release quick and iterate fast as per user suggestions.
They've done that (that's why they're here on HN). Why nitpick the details of their "vision" so early on?
Because they asked for feedback, and that's the big problem I see. It's not that I'm nitpicking at the details of their vision, it's that I think they don't have any vision.
If you want to build a 21st century place for people to meet around reading, those are the kind of features I think you need. If you ask me what I think of your website, I'm going to tell you. I like to think big picture and design, so I'm going to focus on that. In this case I noticed nothing compelling from a big picture perspective, so I focused on that.
Besides, on the post I came from, the person who owns the website said "Bookhuddle is a social network and book reference site created to help people discover, organize, and share book information." So it's quite relevant to say how a social network and reference site created to help people... should actually look like in the 21st century.
Don't apologize for being honest. Your review is good, specific, and honest.
You make good points.
When I went to the site and clicked on a book i through I had been redirected to Amazon... It took some looking around to realize that I was not in Amazon.
To add my little review to this: Why would I go to bookhuddle.com instead of amazon? For the virtual community? Why would I just not look at the user-supplied reviews on amazon.com and bn.com? Figure this one out and you're in the money. Don;t figure it out, and... well...
I think you should make it much easier for people who arrive at your website understand why they should stay.