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.

It’s been one year since we launched iRead and what an amazing year it’s been – we have now over 2 million users and over 40 million books cataloged. Your feature requests and brutally honest feedback (we love your feedback) have helped make iRead the most vibrant social book community of its kind. Thank you!

In many of your feature requests (some of which are still pending), there is a common theme. You asked us to give you details about what your friends were reading, you chucked books by the thousands to tell your friends what to read, and you told us you care more about how your friends rate a book than how it was rated by other users. In other words, you asked us to make online book discovery the way it should be – SOCIAL.

In order to better deliver on your request we have made a few changes. First, to reflect the next exciting phase of iRead, we feel it’s only appropriate to change our name from iRead to weRead. To us, this was a natural progression from i to you to we, as “we” reflects the spirit of your ideas, suggestions and the true social nature of book discovery. It also helps us unify our identity across the internet.

Secondly, we have formed an alliance with Lulu.com, the world’s largest marketplace for self-published authors, to bring more independent authors to your bookshelf. Over next 8-12 weeks look for even more changes as we give weRead a fresh new design and add features that will make weRead the social book discovery tool you asked for.

We are excited about these changes and hope you are too. Thank you again for your continued support and ideas!

iReaders‘ bookshelves will soon have more than 10 million books! When we started, about four months ago, we had no idea that we will reach the 10 million books milestone so soon. We are thrilled and we want to thank you for making iRead the most vibrant book community! To celebrate, we are giving away 10 $100 gift certificates.

So how does this work?

When we reach the 10 millionth book, we will pick 10 lucky iReaders among the ones who have 10 or more books on their shelf and 10 or more friends on iRead. The lucky iReaders will get $100 Barnes and Noble.com gift certificate to buy more books! See below for more details.

Eligibility

• Be a facebook user and have iRead installed on your profile.
• Don’t be lazy. Add books to your profile. You should add atleast 10 books to your iRead shelf.
• Don’t be alone. You should have at least 10 friends on iRead. iRead is more fun with friends!
• Start adding books now so that we can reach the 10 millionth book sooner.

Promotion

• 10 lucky iReaders (a raffle among eligible winners) will win $100 Barnes and Noble.com gift certificates.

How to Enter

• Any Facebook/iRead user who has atleast 10 books on their shelf and 10 Friends on iRead at the time when we hit 10M book adds will automatically be entered into the promotion.
• When we get the 10 millionth book added, we will do a raffle among all eligible iReaders to select 10 winners.

Notification

• We will notify the winner via the send message feature on Facebook.

Other Fine Print

• Barnes and Noble.com gift certificate fine print applies. Click here to see the terms and conditions.
• iRead terms and conditions

  This promotion is valid starting October 17, 2007 and will continue until iRead get 10 million book additions. iRead will issue electronic $100 gift certificates for Barnesandnoble.com to the 10 qualified promotion registrants. To qualify, you must follow the promotion rules. iRead will issue the gift certificates within 30 days of the end of the promotion. If you are one of the first 10 qualified entrants, you will receive a facebook email from iRead with details on how to redeem the gift certificates. iRead reserves the right to cancel this promotion at any time, and to cancel issuance of the gift to certain individuals due to suspected fraud. If you have any questions, please contact ireadsupport@socialwizards.com.