The status quo regarding Goodreads and it's position in the industry is really interesting. There is not a single competent alternative to Goodreads, yet Goodr

The status quo regarding Goodreads and it's position in the industry is really interesting. There is not a single competent alternative to Goodreads, yet Goodreads just sucks! As simple as that, the UI is horrible, the UX is disgusting, the perfomance is that of toaster and still people are using it. I personally am using it for the last 5 years while continuously searching unsuccessfully for alternatives. If you think the website is bad, you should check out the Android app, never in my life have I seen a worse app by a popular company. I got so frustrated by Goodreads that on multiple occasions I thought of starting a competing product just to challenge the status quo, but as soon as I started dwelling deeper into it, I realized that there is just no real viable business model for it to be worth it. I guess that explains the current status of Goodreads and why there are so few competitors. How do you monetize a social network about reading books? I have spent way too much time thinking about it, yet failing to achieve a result. 1)You can't really sell books, since Amazon is already so well entrenched and honestly books aren't a really hot commodity. 2)Subscription for audiobooks? Again there is Audible, and Scribd is also doing a phenomenal business doing it, you pay $9 and listen to as many as you want audiobooks. 3)Affiliate marketing? Goodreads already does it, and it isn't really a business model with a good foundation. 4)Customized ads? This might be the "least" worst solution, although what could you advertise to people who read books? Their LTV (lifetime value of customers) isn't really high. 5)A paid social network? Good luck trying to grow a social network which asks it's users to pay $1 monthly. 6)The latest and craziest idea I had regarding it, was to make it a hybrid of Goodreads and LinkedIn. Where employers can see what types of books are their applicants reading. I.e. if I am looking to hire a backend intern, I am sooner going to hire the intern who read in his free time Effective Java, Clean Code, etc. since you can pretty much gain a good overall picture about a person by looking at the books he reads. I spent way too much time obsessing over this...