Goodreads

Source: RWW, Sep 2012

Goodreads was launched in January 2007 and currently has over 10 million registered users, who have collectively added 370 million books to the site. Goodreads has experienced strong growth over the past 18 months. It had 5 million registered users in May 2011, increasing to 6 million by December. In 2012 the growth of Goodreads went up another level, thanks mainly to its integration with Facebook Timeline in January.

The foundation of Goodreads is providing social recommendations. As Chandler wrote, when explaining why he built Goodreads, “when I want to know what books to read, I’d rather turn to a friend than any random person or bestseller list.” That core functionality got a huge boost from the Facebook integration in January. After all, the more friends you can connect to on Goodreads, the more books you’ll discover.