6 ms·

Hey HN, We're Joe & Stopa, from https://zeneca.io https://zeneca.io. We're building the successor to Goodreads. For now, you can create public bookshelves (i.e

Hey HN, We're Joe & Stopa, from https://zeneca.io https://zeneca.io. We're building the successor to Goodreads. For now, you can create public bookshelves (i.e https://zeneca.io/stopa https://zeneca.io/stopa), discover like-minded readers, and share your favorite quotes and thoughts (i.e here's all I learned from PG: https://www.zeneca.io/stopa/details/shycAgAAQBAJ https://www.zeneca.io/stopa/details/shycAgAAQBAJ) We left our jobs in June last year to build a company together (but we didn’t have an idea… yet!). Since then we’ve shipped several projects. Our criteria for each project was 1) it had to be something we wanted for ourselves and 2) each project had to be more ambitious than the previous. One day, Joe said that he wanted to share his favorite books online, but found most places did not do this in an elegant way. We noticed that the people we admired used plain lists on their personal websites, rather than Goodreads. So we thought, hey, surely this can’t be the best way to do things. Maybe there’s a space here to fill what’s missing. From there, we built a static version of the site, and shared it with our friends: https://zeneca.io/joe https://zeneca.io/joe + https://zeneca.io/stopa https://zeneca.io/stopa This got enough interest, that we coded up the backend, so anyone could create public book pages. So far, 300 people have created their own public book pages. Once book pages were in, more ideas start to sprout. We try to discuss books all over the place: from twitter comments to sparse reddit groups. What if there was a place just for this? You could find like-minded readers, have deeper discussions, and save all those conversations. When you wanted to share a book with a friend, they'd be able to "see" your experience of going through it. To support that, we introduced quotes and thoughts. You can write thoughts about your favorite books, and they'll show up on your public page. Others can send you super cute hearts. This is still very rough. We want to hack together more features, that can help you really engage with books. One thing we hope, is to siphon time off of Twitter and FB, and move it to something much more enriching: discussing and exploring favorite books. Please try it out, we'd appreciate your feedback : ) --- For the technically curious, the site was all built in Clojure. It's been a joy to use. One surprise for us, was just how powerful Postgres is. Coming from big companies, it's easy to move towards more complicated setups -- however Postgres does a phenomenal job of helping you handle a few users without getting in your way, and going much further.

geraltofrivia 6y ago
I signed up and started playing around with it, and I think it looks promising. Some general thoughts: - Moving over my shelves is an undertaking that'll probably take more than 30-40 minutes. Before I do that, I'd like the know about the privacy policy you folks intend to put in place. - On a similar note, potential monetization is also something which worries me because many-a-times monetization comes at the cost of compromising on my privacy. - I'd also like to know if exporting the data would be possible down the line. Some UI, UX thoughts: 1. On the https://www.zeneca.io/library https://www.zeneca.io/library page, there are too many fonts, too many font sizes going on. Explicitly, there is (i) different font size, (AND SPACING!) for "Go to published library" (12.8 px), (ii) another font size for "Change your avatar" (0.9 em) , (iii) another one (understandable, in this case) for my name (1.3 em), (iv) another size for intro (16 px), (v) another for shelf description (1.1 em), (vi) another for shelf name (1.5 em) and (vii) another (18.72 px) for fin. That's too many font sizes. I strongly recommend sticking to three, or four. I would also recommend to fix the spacing on "go to published library". 2. On a similar note, I'm thinking if the avatars could be generated using Spectral (the font used elsewhere), instead of a sans-serif font which looks terribly out of place on the page. Consider using something with a bunch of ligatures ;) 3. On the main page (`/explore`), in the text "Got feedback? Let us know on twitter", you've also italicized the emoji. In my opinion, that looks unnatural, and you're probably better off italicizing just the text. 4. On the same page, avatars (in the left sidebar) have shadows, but that's the only place avatars have shadows. They're not shadowed (is that a word?) on the `/library` page, or the published page. 5. Minor suggestion: There is no way of navigating to the list-of-blog-posts page from the Getting Started Blogpost. There's actually no way of getting there at all since https://www.zeneca.io/blog/ https://www.zeneca.io/blog/ returns a 404 page. This is a bit unusual since the Getting started page is at https://www.zeneca.io/blog/getting-started https://www.zeneca.io/blog/getting-started. (edit) 6. On the published page, the tabs are presented weirdly. It could be that I'm mistaken but in my understanding of tabs, the active one is usually in bold font, black color. The inactive ones are the ones painted blue indicating that they can be clicked upon to navigate to them. In your case, on https://www.zeneca.io/<username> https://www.zeneca.io/<username>, the default, and active tab - "Library" is colored blue, and "Timeline" is colored black. This suggests that I'm on the timeline tab, and can click on library to go to it, when in fact just the opposite is true. PS: I love the box shadow on the shelves ;) I understand that this is a very early version of the site. Kudos for having some working thing. My suggestions above are in no way a criticism of the idea. I sure hope you folks whip up a much needed replacement to Goodreads. Godspeed.

geraltofrivia 6y ago

I signed up and started playing around with it, and I think it looks promising. Some general thoughts: - Moving over my shelves is an undertaking that'll probably take more than 30-40 minutes. Before I do that, I'd like the know about the privacy policy you folks intend to put in place. - On a similar note, potential monetization is also something which worries me because many-a-times monetization comes at the cost of compromising on my privacy. - I'd also like to know if exporting the data would be possible down the line. Some UI, UX thoughts: 1. On the https://www.zeneca.io/library https://www.zeneca.io/library page, there are too many fonts, too many font sizes going on. Explicitly, there is (i) different font size, (AND SPACING!) for "Go to published library" (12.8 px), (ii) another font size for "Change your avatar" (0.9 em) , (iii) another one (understandable, in this case) for my name (1.3 em), (iv) another size for intro (16 px), (v) another for shelf description (1.1 em), (vi) another for shelf name (1.5 em) and (vii) another (18.72 px) for fin. That's too many font sizes. I strongly recommend sticking to three, or four. I would also recommend to fix the spacing on "go to published library". 2. On a similar note, I'm thinking if the avatars could be generated using Spectral (the font used elsewhere), instead of a sans-serif font which looks terribly out of place on the page. Consider using something with a bunch of ligatures ;) 3. On the main page (`/explore`), in the text "Got feedback? Let us know on twitter", you've also italicized the emoji. In my opinion, that looks unnatural, and you're probably better off italicizing just the text. 4. On the same page, avatars (in the left sidebar) have shadows, but that's the only place avatars have shadows. They're not shadowed (is that a word?) on the `/library` page, or the published page. 5. Minor suggestion: There is no way of navigating to the list-of-blog-posts page from the Getting Started Blogpost. There's actually no way of getting there at all since https://www.zeneca.io/blog/ https://www.zeneca.io/blog/ returns a 404 page. This is a bit unusual since the Getting started page is at https://www.zeneca.io/blog/getting-started https://www.zeneca.io/blog/getting-started. (edit) 6. On the published page, the tabs are presented weirdly. It could be that I'm mistaken but in my understanding of tabs, the active one is usually in bold font, black color. The inactive ones are the ones painted blue indicating that they can be clicked upon to navigate to them. In your case, on https://www.zeneca.io/<username> https://www.zeneca.io/<username>, the default, and active tab - "Library" is colored blue, and "Timeline" is colored black. This suggests that I'm on the timeline tab, and can click on library to go to it, when in fact just the opposite is true. PS: I love the box shadow on the shelves ;) I understand that this is a very early version of the site. Kudos for having some working thing. My suggestions above are in no way a criticism of the idea. I sure hope you folks whip up a much needed replacement to Goodreads. Godspeed.