weRead blog (iRead)

Books Change Lives

nick — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:46:22 +0000

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!

How long do you normally take to finish reading a book?

nick — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:01:25 +0000

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!

CNet picks weRead as a top Facebook app that “teaches you something”

Krishna — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:27:58 +0000

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.

weRead is a Facebook Verified App!

nick — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:32:50 +0000

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.

Pick 5 Books

nick — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:24:15 +0000

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!

If Shakespeare Were Alive Today, He Would Be…

nick — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:28:45 +0000

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.

Quick Polls on the weRead home page

Krishna — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:23:18 +0000

If you’ve got an opinion, we’ve got a way for you to share it on weRead. Take a look at the new Quick Poll feature we launched on our home page. This week, we are celebrating the 445th anniversary of the Bard. Our poll seeks to find out what weReaders think William Shakespeare would be, if he were alive today. We have received hundreds of responses within the first twelve hours; proving that, no matter what people think Shakespeare would be if he were alive, he is very popular.

If you want more Shakespeare, check out the reader-contributed Shakespeare Quiz, or go to his profile on Author’s Corner and start reading his classics for free.

Our last week’s poll was on the power of books as agents of change. We asked whether weReaders thought Barack Obama’s book, Audacity of Hope helped his presidential campaign. 69% of weReaders felt that the book did help!

Please email us, or tweet to us if you have suggestions for polls we should be conducting. If your suggestion gets picked, we will feature your weRead profile on the home page!

Find In A Library Near You

nick — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:19:20 +0000

As any avid reader knows, libraries are an excellent resource for finding the books you want without having to spend tons of money. In fact, library memberships are 100% free and are excellent places to do research or just find that book you’ve been dying to read. To help facilitate you finding books that are recommended to you weRead recently partnered with Worldcat.org to help you find books in a library near you. Here’s the official announcement.

To make things as straight-forward as possible, we’ve put a “Find in a library near you” link on every book page.

After clicking on the link we will transfer you to Worldcat’s page for the book which will show you the libraries its database that have the book in stock, and are closest to your location.

Most of the libraries have online databases, and you can then click on them to reserve a copy of the book. Then you can go pick it up and start reading!

Link Twitter & weRead

nick — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:12:25 +0000

We have another exciting new feature to tell you about, which is the ability to link your weRead account with your Twitter account! If you’re not already familiar with Twitter, it is a site that allows you to “micro-blog”. You post updates about what you’re doing, link to interesting stuff on the web, and keep your friends (or followers as Twitter calls them) updated. The catch (and why they call it “micro”) is that you are limited to 140 characters. We have added functionality so that when you add or review a book it is updated to your Twitter account, so your friends know what you’ve been reading. Sound interesting? Here’s how to get started.

Note: This how-to assumes you have a Twitter account. If you don’t have one already, then you can start one by joining Twitter.

Step 1: Click the link on the weRead homepage to “Link twitter and weread to update your Twitter status automatically when you add or review a book.” Or you can click on “Twitter user” link at the top of the page which is next to sign-in link.

Step 2: Enter your Twitter username and password, and set how many times a day you want weRead to update your Twitter status.

Step 3: Continue adding and reviewing books on weRead, and the updates will show up on Twitter automatically!

It’s easy to set up, and another way to let your friends know what you’re up to on weRead. To disable Twitter updates from weRead, you can click “delete details” in the above settings page.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback on our new feature! Let us know how this is helping you or how we can make it better by emailing us.

Search In A Shelf

nick — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:20:14 +0000

One of our most commonly requested features has been the option to search for books within your own bookshelf. We have listened to your requests, and implemented this exciting new feature! Now the search in a shelf feature makes it easy for users to find books they have added to their bookshelf again. For some users this may not seem all that exciting, but it is extremely useful for our power users who have more than 50 books in their shelf. Of course, this also makes managing your bookshelf a lot easier, since you can find and edit specific book listings quickly and easily.

Another useful example of how you can use this feature is if you have 101 books on your shelf, and want to find all the books by Neil Gaiman you have on it. With search in a shelf, now you can easily find out which ones you have listed!

You can also search for books on your friends’ bookshelves or even the bookshelves of users you don’t know. This is particularly useful if you’re trying to find out whether the friend has read a particular book or not so you can recommend it to them, or even buy it for them as a gift.

The search within a shelf feature is shown on the “My Reads” page where you can see all the books on your bookshelf.