Recently, CNET published an article highlighting online tool to help authors create and connect. weRead was featured in the article for its active community where users can share the books they love, and authors can connect with their readers. We’re honored to be on the list, and highly recommend the article as a jumping off point for authors trying to figure out what to do after they’ve finished writing.

Yesterday I finally got a chance to check out the movie adaptation for J.K. Rowling’s sixth book, “Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince”. I have to say, of the six movies, this one was my favorite. It didn’t have as much action as some of the previous ones, but it had a lot of character development and information in it. Sure, they changed some things, and they left a bunch of stuff out altogether, but overall I thought it was really solid. I was particularly surprised that… (Spoiler Alert behind jump. Click “Read More” for the details.)

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I admit it, I’m a Potter fan. Not only have I read all the books, but I have also dressed up as Draco Malfoy on multiple occasions. With all the hype about the sixth movie, I can’t wait to get to the theatre and check it out! Unfortunately, I can’t make it until Sunday, but I’ll be there with my Slytherin tie on. What about you? Have you already seen it? Do you have plans to see it this weekend? Will you be dressing up? Let us know on our poll at weRead.

You can also participate in an active discussion on whether the movie will be better than the book, or at least do justice to it.

We are excited to announce the launch of weRead on Yahoo! weRead is one of the top few applications which got launched on Yahoo! We are proud to be the first and the only book application on Yahoo!.

To use the application, you can go to: http://apps.yahoo.com/-Ku3UzX36/

or you can find it on http://my.yahoo.com -> Add Content -> Entertainment->Books

Now you can experience all the social book features of weRead on Yahoo! Whenever you add a book to your shelf or rate a book, your friends would get an update on their Yahoo! messenger. On My Yahoo! you would get updates on the recent book activities from your friends. Yahoo! has more than 500 million users and their usage would make social book discovery more exciting.

We have made it simple for you to move your existing weRead bookshelf. For this, please use “Take your bookshelf with you” feature on weRead application in your current social networking site(Facebook, orkut, hi5, Bebo, weread.com etc)

We would love to hear from you. Please send us feedback on “help@weread.com“.

Thanks,
weRead team

PS.For more details, Yahoo! covered it in their blogs (http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2009/06/open_apps.html) and techcrunch covered it here (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/05/more-opensocial-apps-invade-myyahoo-mint-kaching-wordpress/).

It’s said that books have the power to change lives. Is there such a book in your life? This is the topic of our latest poll on the weRead homepage. 66% of the people who have taken the poll so far have said that a book has changed their life. We’ve also received some interesting “Other” votes. For example, many people have responded that not just one book has changed their life, but several of them have. Of course, some people took a more humorous outlook and responded with things like, “It once filled me with courage and energy to read a Harry Potter book!”

Regardless of what your answer may be we want to know what you think!

We have a new poll running on http://weread.com, and we want to know, “how long do you normally take to finish reading a book”? So far, 39% of our users have said they don’t put down a book until they’re finished, and 38% say they read for an hour or two each day and finish the book in a few weeks. Let us know what you think, and thanks for voting!

Don Reisinger has an article on CNet that lists his 10 picks for Facebook apps that “teach you something”. weRead is proud to be one of them. Don says

Reading books is an important part of life. But too many people aren’t reading as much as they should. That’s where WeRead comes in. When you first add it to your profile, WeRead asks you to click on the books you like from a list. Based on those choices, it automatically generates a list of books you might like to read. It even lets you search friends’ profiles to see which books they recommend. If you read a lot of books, you might want to take the WeRead “Never ending book quiz.” It asks you questions about hundreds of books to see how much you comprehend after you finish a book.

We get a lot of emails and wall posts from users saying how much they love weRead and how much fun it is to update their bookshelf and chuck books at friends. Don’s endorsement of weRead shines a rare light on our mission to improve readership of books around the world.

We’re very excited to announce that weRead is one of the first 120 apps to be officially verified by Facebook! The verification program highlights apps that strive to be transparent about how they work and respect social expectations between friends. In order to be verified, the app must meet Facebook’s criteria of being trustworthy and transparent as well as providing an excellent customer experience and ensuring the privacy of our user’s information. As such, we are very proud to have been included in the very first group of verified apps, and we are committed to continuing to provide all of our users with a first-rate experience.

Recently we launched a new feature, which allows you to choose your top 5 books and the 5 books you think are the worst to share with your friends. After selecting your picks you can then see other people’s lists, so you can compare.

To get started just go to http://apps.facebook.com/ireadit/redirect.php?next=top_lists and search for your favorite books. Once you have selected your top 5 you will be able to tell your friends about your picks and even post the results to your Facebook page if you have one. Here’s my current top 5!

You will then be able to pick your 5 worst books of all time, and share those with your friends as well. Once you’re done making your picks you will be able to see the top 5 books of all time and the worst 5 books of all time as selected by our community. You can see our current standings below, but if you create your lists now then you can influence the standings!

Recently, weRead launched a new feature on our homepage, polls! We want to hear what you all think, and so we will be regularly asking questions for your feedback. Sometimes this will be on things you might like to see on the site, or something similar, but sometimes it will be a little more fun. Currently, we want to know “If Shakespeare were alive today, he would be…”? We’ve gotten a lot of interesting responses, but so far 40% of you think he would be a struggling author.

What does this tell us about the state of the industry when we think that the playwright we all read in high school would have to struggle to get anything published if he were alive today? Maybe he would be on weRead trying to promote his books, or publish them for free on a self-publishing site like Lulu.com? Regardless, this is exactly why we started weRead in the first place. We want to help struggling writers find new avenues for reaching their fans, and to help book lovers to find books they might not have ever heard of, and share their love of books with their friends. It’s a tall order to be sure, but maybe we can help the next William Shakespeare connect with his or her fans.