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GoodReads is all but dead for many. A few months ago, they deprecated their API keys (without notice). I started building a GoodReads-equivalent but realized t

GoodReads is all but dead for many. A few months ago, they deprecated their API keys (without notice). I started building a GoodReads-equivalent but realized that many people care more about learning from multiple media formats (blogs, videos, research papers, interactive explorables, podcasts, courses etc) rather than simply reading books. Because there are too many projects attempting to build a new GoodReads, I ended up building something more oriented for multimedia learners. It’s up and running, open-source, built with Ruby on Rails and supports protocols like ActivityPub, RSS etc. There is a companion browser extension, integration with Slack groups, Twitter and more, and a WIP mobile app. Like GoodReads, you can build your learning lists and embed them on your sites. It participates in fediverse so your reviews can be broadcasted to your followers on Mastodon, PeerTube etc but full federation is not yet there because it has an underlying knowledge graph that will need to be synchronised across instances. I think many HN users may be interested in checking it out: https://learnawesome.org/ https://learnawesome.org/ https://github.com/learn-awesome/learn https://github.com/learn-awesome/learn

mathnmusic 5y ago
One of the cool things that the knowledge graph enables is that you can follow “topics” and get learning resources like latest research papers for THAT TOPIC in your feed - even outside the main site. This is the power of ActivityPub which is really a distributed pub/sub for the open Web. My motivation for building this feature came from the reproducibility crisis: I want to be alerted when something I believe has come under question or has been falsified.
Scarblac 5y ago
Where do you get the books from? I'm often surprised when I start reading an obscure Dutch second hand book that Goodreads has it. Is the ISBN database open data?
- mathnmusic 5y ago
  OpenLibrary (relatively less known project by Internet Archive) is doing good work on collecting identifiers for books and works, which LearnAwesome leverages. But if you check in app/utilities/book.rb, you will notice that we have our own data enrichment pipeline to work with multiple sources.
- input_sh 5y ago
  If you mean ISBNs in general, that's not available. However plenty of libraries around the world do publish their own list of ISBNs, and you'll find dozens of datasets and search engines that combine those into one. You're gonna have to move away from western languages entirely to find a book that's not available in one of those.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Goodreads is owned by Amazon, and a lot of the data in various digital sources (both real and correct and random or mistaken) seem to come from people listing physical books for sale through Amazon. (Library catalogues are another common source) The ISBN codes seems to be in some weird legal gray area. The codes can be broken down so you can tell (to some degree) which language, geographic region and publisher was involved and whether the ISBN is valid (as in meets a checksum constraint) and has been "issued" (a continually updating list) managed in a decentralised manner but since it's an older system, it wasn't ever really designed for this kind of usage. It also hits the problem, that these days you care a little less about the actual physical object, which ISBN was designed around, but certainly a trove of data hidden there.
personjerry 5y ago
GoodReads isn't about learning though. It's about books. I think there's value and potential in the niche you've chosen. I want to point out that the "learning" niche is very different than the "book review" niche and comes with its own set of very strong competitors.
- leetrout 5y ago
  This is all new to me. Who competes in this space? Or what are some good keywords to search with?
  - bogwog 5y ago
    Learning? Just search for "learn <subject>" and you'll see a bunch. I remember my university had a partnership with one called Lynda.com, but that seems to have been acquired by LinkedIn.
avnigo 5y ago
I recently came across the API issue too; from their page on APIs [0] > Goodreads no longer issues new developer keys for our public developer API and plans to retire the current version of these tools. I generally find that I trust their book ratings more than any other sites, though, seeing as they are user-generated, and also given the amount of users being in the 10s of millions. BookWyrm seems pretty fantastic and promising from what I see, but I don't know that it would attract the current Goodreads user. I'm really hoping it gets some traction. [0]: https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/Does-Goodreads-support-the-use-of-APIs https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/Does-Goodreads-support-...
- vosper 5y ago
  > I generally find that I trust their book ratings more than any other sites, though, seeing as they are user-generated There are far too many reviews for advanced copies seeded by publishers, though, and there’s no consistent disclosure or way to filter these out. That, and the rating system is far too simplistic. When you’re optimizing for engagement then having users spend a lot of time reading reviews is probably good. It’s not optimized for time spent to find a good book to read, though.
  - avnigo 5y ago
    Agreed. I was more so referring to the law of large numbers, hoping that from their large user base it's more likely to get a more representative rating than a site with a smaller user base maybe suffering from some sampling bias.
leetrout 5y ago
Wow you've got a lot going on. Do you have any stats on usage you feel like sharing? I'm curious how people have discovered this and how it has grown since this seems outside any circles I am around except HN.
- mathnmusic 5y ago
  So, more than 1,000 users have signed up as of now. But because all content is public (does not require login), most traffic is unauthenticated. Some topics are ranked decently in Google, so users come and pick a resource and leave. Which is completely fine (that’s how Google itself works) but that does mean that the social features are currently underused.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mathnmusic 5y ago

One of the cool things that the knowledge graph enables is that you can follow “topics” and get learning resources like latest research papers for THAT TOPIC in your feed - even outside the main site. This is the power of ActivityPub which is really a distributed pub/sub for the open Web. My motivation for building this feature came from the reproducibility crisis: I want to be alerted when something I believe has come under question or has been falsified.

Scarblac 5y ago

Where do you get the books from? I'm often surprised when I start reading an obscure Dutch second hand book that Goodreads has it. Is the ISBN database open data?

mathnmusic 5y ago
OpenLibrary (relatively less known project by Internet Archive) is doing good work on collecting identifiers for books and works, which LearnAwesome leverages. But if you check in app/utilities/book.rb, you will notice that we have our own data enrichment pipeline to work with multiple sources.
input_sh 5y ago
If you mean ISBNs in general, that's not available. However plenty of libraries around the world do publish their own list of ISBNs, and you'll find dozens of datasets and search engines that combine those into one. You're gonna have to move away from western languages entirely to find a book that's not available in one of those.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Goodreads is owned by Amazon, and a lot of the data in various digital sources (both real and correct and random or mistaken) seem to come from people listing physical books for sale through Amazon. (Library catalogues are another common source) The ISBN codes seems to be in some weird legal gray area. The codes can be broken down so you can tell (to some degree) which language, geographic region and publisher was involved and whether the ISBN is valid (as in meets a checksum constraint) and has been "issued" (a continually updating list) managed in a decentralised manner but since it's an older system, it wasn't ever really designed for this kind of usage. It also hits the problem, that these days you care a little less about the actual physical object, which ISBN was designed around, but certainly a trove of data hidden there.

personjerry 5y ago

GoodReads isn't about learning though. It's about books. I think there's value and potential in the niche you've chosen. I want to point out that the "learning" niche is very different than the "book review" niche and comes with its own set of very strong competitors.

leetrout 5y ago
This is all new to me. Who competes in this space? Or what are some good keywords to search with?
- bogwog 5y ago
  Learning? Just search for "learn <subject>" and you'll see a bunch. I remember my university had a partnership with one called Lynda.com, but that seems to have been acquired by LinkedIn.

avnigo 5y ago

I recently came across the API issue too; from their page on APIs [0] > Goodreads no longer issues new developer keys for our public developer API and plans to retire the current version of these tools. I generally find that I trust their book ratings more than any other sites, though, seeing as they are user-generated, and also given the amount of users being in the 10s of millions. BookWyrm seems pretty fantastic and promising from what I see, but I don't know that it would attract the current Goodreads user. I'm really hoping it gets some traction. [0]: https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/Does-Goodreads-support-the-use-of-APIs https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/Does-Goodreads-support-...

vosper 5y ago
> I generally find that I trust their book ratings more than any other sites, though, seeing as they are user-generated There are far too many reviews for advanced copies seeded by publishers, though, and there’s no consistent disclosure or way to filter these out. That, and the rating system is far too simplistic. When you’re optimizing for engagement then having users spend a lot of time reading reviews is probably good. It’s not optimized for time spent to find a good book to read, though.
- avnigo 5y ago
  Agreed. I was more so referring to the law of large numbers, hoping that from their large user base it's more likely to get a more representative rating than a site with a smaller user base maybe suffering from some sampling bias.

leetrout 5y ago

Wow you've got a lot going on. Do you have any stats on usage you feel like sharing? I'm curious how people have discovered this and how it has grown since this seems outside any circles I am around except HN.

mathnmusic 5y ago
So, more than 1,000 users have signed up as of now. But because all content is public (does not require login), most traffic is unauthenticated. Some topics are ranked decently in Google, so users come and pick a resource and leave. Which is completely fine (that’s how Google itself works) but that does mean that the social features are currently underused.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]