Hacker News Reader

Comment by sgpl | Hacker News Reader

Not surprised. Goodreads is for books what IMDB is for movies (which Amazon also owns). It'll nicely complement Amazon as a recommendation engine to push buyers to amazon to purchase books (which it already does). I use goodreads to track books that I want to read at some later point; and have used it to discover new books.

Atleast I'm glad it was Amazon vs "Any Other Big Corp" because I believe that Amazon will keep the service alive vs shutting it down or trying to absorb it somehow.

View on HN

This isn't a good analogy. IMDb was and is literally the best source of movie data anywhere. It is more useful to think of them as Wikipedia for movies since the community maintains the info and includes data that isn't available anywhere else.

Goodreads is the largest community of book readers in the world and so they would be able to provide their tools for book groups and conversations about books that Amazon is sorely lacking.

That isn't a good analysis. I have found wikipedia itself to be the best source of movie data. For all titles I've searched (and not always mainstream or US releases), wikipedia has a better summary, a better plot description, more release info, and a better page layout. Perhaps it doesn't list all the production details such as who was the key grip, but you can easily jump to all the major cast and producer/director wiki pages. It just seems more complete and easier to read. Imdb now seems too specialized, like it's for the movie industry itself.

That might be precisely what the OP meant by 'best'. To me the distinction they make seems important and not inconsistent with what you've said.

Of course, Amazon's purchase of IMDB took place several years before Wikipedia even existed.

I'd compare Goodreads to Foursquare. I mostly use it for my own purposes of tracking what I'm reading (similar to checking in at a restaurant) and occasionally see a recommendation from a friend I'm following (similar to restaurant tips/check ins).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com