4 ms·
The recommendation system is broken, however the social networking features can surmount it. For example, my Goodreads "friends" are people who like the books
by officemonkey 7y ago
The recommendation system is broken, however the social networking features can surmount it.
For example, my Goodreads "friends" are people who like the books I like. There's no social obligation. FFS, I unfriended my sister. My high-school friend who only reads YA fiction: he was unfriended years ago.
My favorite goodreads friends are a half-dozen people I've never even met, but I agree with their reviews. When they give a book 5 stars, I check it out.
That's the key to Goodreads. If Amazon can't figure out how to make better recommendations, they should look long and hard at how the social graph beats the star-ratings.
- romack77 7y agoAgreed. This is how I use Goodreads for recommendations as well. There's the "Compare Books" tool to get a quick sense of whether someone reads what you read. And then reading a couple of their reviews is usually enough to get a sense of whether their recs will agree with you. It's more labor intensive than a standard recommendation system, but the results are better. Since books are a large time commitment, and people are passionate about them, a lot of people are willing to put uncommon effort into finding good ones.