The Good

They offer a wide variety of services, but they are mostly tied in within the original scope of the site. A brief rundown:

• Profile management - a staple.
• Private Messaging - another staple.
• My Quotes - Quote you’ve found that you enjoy.
• My Writing - A neat way of getting your writing out there. You maintain the copyright to anything you write, and it collects it all for you. Very smart idea.
• My Groups - Another staple. You can join groups and converse there. There are also systems in place to meet people, and rolls up a list of people online in your country.
• My Comments - Collects and displays all of your comments on the site.
• My Events -Allows you to create events that you are attending or making. Think of Facebooks event management.
• My Books - The heart and soul of the site, and what I’m sure was the original conception to the site. This section lists all of the books on your bookshelves (you can customize your shelves) as well as your reviews for them as well as ratings therein. Really nice system, straightforward.

I’m glad someone actually went ahead and made a site like this. The user base is still fairly small all things considered, but it has potential. What I really like is that when I first log in I am presented with a list of all of the reviews that have occurred in my absence. Considering I just added Bart and his girlfriend (somehow she’s already up to 78 books in her shelf… in 5 minutes) I’m already being assailed with a large list of books that I can note down as to-read or actually add my own rating to.

In addition of the whole participant social scene within the site, there is also an author listing, which is really interesting because not only does it give you a biography of the author, their site, and what they’ve written; it also allows you to become friends with them. I find this an interesting change from the norm; it’s like taking the fandom and bringing them a step closer. It’s a neat idea though I wonder how many authors would actively participate in the site.

One thing I’m really in love with is the fact that when you rate a book it’s instantly added to your “read pile.” What this allows you to do is search for your books, add them, and then you can go back on your own time and add your reviews. A great way to increase user use and acceptance.

The Bad

I am perpetually cringing at the UI. I know I’m not a designer yet, and I know that my opinion is one of many, but there are just certain things that you don’t do:

• Using Georgia for EVERYTHING on the site is painful, and gets really hard to read. From what I’ve learned, Georgia is a “heading” font, not a “content” font. The reason for this (and I could be wrong here) is because Georgia isn’t as readable at a smaller size then say, Arial or Verdana.
• Having a lot of text on a page can get painful when it’s not divided properly. Sometimes less is more, and if you simply have to display what you are displaying, then maybe applying a Grid to the content could help clean it up. This allows for a greater amount of text without being as busy-feeling.
• Overuse of Google ads gets annoying, and detracts from what you’re actually trying to sell (in this case, the functionality of the site)
• Does it need a lot of the functions that it’s offering? I know they’re cool and all, but some of them could be dropped, or possibly expanded upon and moved into their own sub-site (My Writing comes to mind). The Events section is neat, but is it really required? Facebook does a pretty solid job, and sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, and Pownce do a great job of handling small blurbs about where you’re going.
• Thing’s feel a bit buried. It takes too many clicks to do some things, and it gets painful. The general rule is that three clicks should bring you where you need, and they do meet that (for the most part). What’s weird is that at the top right of your personal home page, there are “Add more books” and “Add more friends” links, but to add anything to the other sections (Quotes, Writing, Events, Comments) You need to go into those sections to add anything. Why not have those links under the first two Add links?
• I’ve noticed a couple of programming bugs that make the coder in me cringe. Nothing major, but the site could use a little polishing, code-wise.
• The search isn’t all that robust. When it doesn’t come back with any results, it doesn’t offer any suggestions, which is becoming the norm. More than once I had to use the amazon search to find what I wanted, then when I added it, it magically found it within the system. A little annoying.

Ending Thoughts

Pretty neat, and I’ll give it the old college try. I’m glad someone actually decided to come out with a website dedicated to the review and sharing of literature, I just hope the site doesn’t go belly-up due to lack of participation or some other crummy reason. A lot of cool features, though I think that a couple bog the system down. The UI hurts my brain, but I’m willing to get past that because the website has real merit, and I want to contribute to a community that I can actually get behind.