Just-in-time, just-for-me reading, TTT113 - 07.16.08
Posted by Paul Allison on 15th August 2008
Listen to a lively conversation about how to use Shelfari– or how to get a similar site built — to create a social networking site for students to share their book logs, reviews, and recommendations with each other.
Susan Ettenheim and Paul Allison (and Lee Baber in the chat room) welcomed:
- Amanda, the Community Manager at Shelfari
- Bill Fitzgerald, our open-source friend and web developer from Funny Monkey
- Wesley Fryer, who blogs and podcasts at Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Earlier this summer, Susan Ettenheim began to work with the folks at Shelfari to see about using their social reading site in her school. Wesley Fryer noticed her interest and detailed a quest he has to find or build a social networking site for young readers. He wrote that he
wants “Netflix functionality… the site should offer the following
features:
- The website should be free for anyone to register for and use,
but minors should be required to obtain parental consent to comply with
COPPA and other relevant laws as described above.- The site should permit users to RATE books they’ve read, from one to five stars, just like NetFlix.
- The
site should let users write book reviews and recommendations that can
be public and/or sent directly to friends, just like NetFlix.- The
site should let users maintain lists of friends, and view what those
friends report they are currently reading, as well as their friends’
recommendations for books to read.- The site should use AI technologies
(or whatever you call the technologies that can do this sort of thing)
to dynamically generate book recommendations for an individual based on
the books s/he has already rated in the system.
A Quest for NetFlix Plus Functionality for Books - for Young Readers!
Bill Fitgerald responded with “A Blueprint for a Site for Young Readers“:
Here’s how I’d go about building that site using Drupal.
The main functional requirements:
These requirements are pulled and paraphrased from Wes’ post; any that I have added are italicized.
- COPPA compliant — no personal data collected from minors without the prior consent of an adult;
- Readers can rate books they have read;
- Readers can create lists of friends; these “friendships” can be one way, or reciprocal;
- Readers can write reviews on books; these reviews can be shared publicly, or privately between friends;
- The site should recommend books to readers based on their likes and dislikes of other books;
- Readers should be able to see what their friends are reading, and any reviews/recommendations of their friends;
- Readers should be able to keep a reading log on the site; this reading log should have the ability to be public or private;
- Readers should be able to form public and private groups/communities.
There are other features that will need attention, of course; for
example, a site like this will require a detail-rich user profile page,
and pages for recent recommendations, featured books, featured readers,
etc.
That’s where our conversation began!
Posted in Susan Ettenheim, Bill Fitzgerald, Shelfari, reading, social networks, Wesley Fryer, Amanda, Open Source | No Comments »