478 comments. Interviewee: Well, its a big new feature for us, its the ability for members to list their books swappable and then swap with other members. I never give up my books after I fall in love with them. "[34], In January 2016, Amazon announced that it would shut down Shelfari in favor of Goodreads, effective March 16, 2016. In December 2020, Goodreads deactivated API keys more than 30 days old and said it would no longer be issuing new API keys. [3][4] In December 2007, the site had 650,000 members[5] and 10,000,000 books had been added. Thats intense. But yeah, I think you need to be doing everything and anything you can. Hes a guy who once hes done reading a book he just tosses it out I guess because he sent the book to me, the one that I was most interested in. Users were offered the ability to export data and migrate accounts. Its cataloguing your books. Goodreads is basically a social network for book lovers. [52] Goodreads librarians coordinate on the Goodreads Librarian Group. Luckily the guy who had Goodreads.com with an s sold it to me otherwise Im not sure if it would have taken off like it did. Heres the interview. Before we continue with the story, Otis can you tell the people what Goodreads is, if theyve never been on it, if theyre not one of the, one of the millions of people on the site? [6] This funding lasted Goodreads until 2009, when Goodreads received two million dollars from True Ventures. Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon[1] that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Thanks Otis. You know, for pretty much every ethnicity, every race, every sports activity, anything you can figure that you can create a community around there was a dating site for that. I'm an entrepreneur, a product person, a book lover, a surfer, and a geek. And both my grandfathers own their own companies and are successful. Andrew: Okay, and howd you figure out that Goodreads was going to be the vehicle? Mark (unclear) was here, and I asked him if hed recommend business school to other people and he said No, theres so many better ways to waste your money than that. Amazon bought Goodreads for $150 million in 2013, though founders Otis and Elizabeth stayed on for a few more years. Whatd you want to do when you graduated? They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. I emailed Kareem and I said I love your reviewer, I love the book that you talked about. He talked about a book that talked about Ryanair, I forget the name of the book, and he said, Dude, Ill send it to you.. Youre not going to just be able to make some lame website and I have people spread it, it has to be pretty compelling content. Interviewee: I think you can and theres certainly examples of guys whove done that. His books ten years ago they would just become best sellers by getting in the New York Times. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. How do you like it? Research help from Claire Murashima. So now you have the opportunity to become a better writer by putting yourself out there more and more often and seeing what people like and dont like. Because one thing we noticed early on was that wed be browsing around and some guys profile would say Hey, Im so-and-so the author of this and wed be like Whoa, theres really cool authors hanging on our site. This sparked public outrage and started a discussion on the relationship between authors and reviewers on Goodreads. Goodreads members can apply to become volunteer librarians after they have 50 books on their profile. In 2013, Goodreads sold to Amazon for an undisclosed sum; and today, it's the world's largest site for readers, with 125 million users. [7] On March 28, 2013, Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads,[8] and by July 23, 2013, Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members. But actively working at it, getting into doing speaking events around the book, doing readings and absolutely social media, I think, is big. Interviewee: Thank you Andrew. So I spent the summer learning HTML, and mySQL and plugging in a lot of boring mathematical formulas and chemical property charts into a website. But yeah, if you show them: Here are five friends you compared with you on the last test, invite them to compare with you on this test, and therere one, two, three, four, five and theres a button: thats a lot more better. Otis Chandler's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. Andrew: I see. They were very open with all number and stats and where the business was going, and they really believe in being a teaching company, which I also believe in, from them. So giving users the ability to do that means you can use it without your friends being on there. [68], Authors who are aware of the site have noted problematic qualities of Goodreads affecting discoverability and search engine results, particularly the platform's inability to sort pseudonyms, and its refusal to allow authors to choose the primary author name that appears on book records. But yes, I have seen the bloggers, I have seen the podcasters built up a big enough audience to then parley that into book sales. Number three when I finally come back to the US you can come out to a Mixergy event to see him in person. That gave his business enough traction to raise money from investors and grow it to over 2.6 million members. Interviewee: Right, thats actually a big focus of ours right now, and has been for the last two years, I think. Cause I was you know, Mechanical Engineer major, and these were two mechanical engineers that wanted to build a website for mechanical engineers, and it was basically gonna be an online resource for engineers to look up metallic chart properties or various formulas that you would normally find in your textbooks, but this was just gonna be easier. I had a drawer, not a drawer, several cabinets full of disassembled stuff. He essentially mentored me into becoming more than an engineer, becoming a product manager, and by the end of Tickle, I was not just a coder, I was managing a team of ten people including marketing, design, business development and engineering, and et cetera. They finally have written a book, its going to be out there, people are going to know their name. [6] By July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and thirty employees. [41], The website facilitates reader interactions with authors through the interviews, giveaways, authors' blogs, and profile information. If its not you focus on the part of the business that you know and get a rock star engineer. Whered you come up with the idea? It had a news feed before Facebook did. Interviewee: Well sure, like I said, every time you had you made a friend on Tickle. I actually found a dating site once for people who golf. Otis Chandler Net Worth Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in California. I was a Saint Bernard because Im loyal. And Goodreads, before it got any outside funding, it was him, just building this thing up. So they finally got an idea that went big, it was just because it was something that was fun. Andrew: Okay, great. If they were black, theyd go to a black dating site. Did you run a bunch of different quizzes, and then that ones that did you test a bunch of different quizzes and only run widely those that worked well, or did you have some other system to figure out what was compelling? Even if you get published by Harper Collins or Manninghouse, great theyre going to put your book in the Barnes & Noble store but, theyre not going to market beyond that. You know I was talking to one of my favorite authors, Steven [Pressfield] who told me that exact thing. So its gotten a lot harder. I cant believe I struggled over it because now its a no-brainer. [23] In October 2012, Goodreads announced it had grown to 11 million members with 395 million books cataloged and over 20,000 book clubs created by its users. [39] Goodreads also offers quizzes and trivia, quotations, book lists, and free giveaways. But, you guys also did certain things to make it even more viral. Interviewee: What else did we do? . Because Goodreads allows reviews for any book record as soon as it first appears on Goodreads, and cannot verify that any account-holder in fact owns the book they claim to have read, there is no clear way to police this. And I think it has. Shes loving that line that you said, Ill teach you everything about business school in two days. I love it too Big Space. I mean it was all about creating content so I mean to make something viral you have to create something that is able to go viral right? I had never read Pride and Prejudice. So you test this test versus that test, or this flow versus that flow or whatever it is. Net Worth in 2022: $1 Million - $5 Million: Salary in . So it just always seemed like something I wanted to do. You can spend hours on there. If you're a premium member, you can save your likes. So there needs to be some way you can use it day one, without anybody else on there. The easier you make things for users, the better; so if you tell them: Youve got to do a bunch of work to find your friends and send these test results to you, theyre not going to do as much. Andrew: Alright, so one of the reasons that it went viral is because people love talking about their IQs or the results of their tests, what kind of dog they were. GoodReads didirikan pada Desember 2006, resmi dirilis pada 30 Januari 2007 oleh Otis Chandler dan Elizabeth Khuri. Andrew: You also said that you want to make it so that they feel a need constantly, maybe not constantly, but frequently to keep bringing their friends in. Like about 10% of our users went kind of nuts and would add everything theyve ever read. Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. And it actually launched under Goodreadz.com with a z. So you know this idea is kind of built into it, and everywhere you go on the site youre kind of getting this reminder that theres stuff happening here and your friends are talking about it, and that just kind of helps get the concept across that hey, I should add friends. Any good social network does that well. And I think a lot of companies dont realize that when you look at all the dumb domains out there. Interviewee: Its a very smart point, because if something is boring, if you sign up for a service and theres nothing for you to do until someone signs up, youre just going to leave, right? Tweet. But if you wrote a book about a certain topic you should go to people whofind communities around that topic and market to them. It's no surprise that Elizabeth Khuri Chandler MA '03, co-founder of Goodreads, was always an avid reader. [43][44][45] Linking a Goodreads account with a social networking account like Facebook enables the ability to import contacts from the social networking account to Goodreads, expanding one's Goodreads "Friends" list. Many of his most prized pieces had already been sold, including his 1894 Baldwin steam locomotive and his beloved Porsche 917 racecars. The New York Times noted that Goodreads, at the time of the acquisition, had a more reputable reviewing system than Amazon's. [31] You know, today we have Goodreads for books and we have Flickster for movies and we have Netflix and we have LastFM for music. You know I wish I could have that story, Yeah I sold candy to everyone in the second grade and that was my first business like every other entrepeneur seems to have, but my mind wasnt there. So you know this idea is kind of built into it, and everywhere you go on the site youre kind of getting this reminder that theres stuff happening here and your friends are talking about it, and that just kind of helps get the concept across that hey, I should add friends. Whether you own them or not. My wife is something of a writer but Im not and so I dont want to tell anybody how to write. hide caption. But the point is, you went from big generic to lots of little niche ones and the niche ones worked because they were tight around a community and the interests that people liked. So that was the big lesson, serious is good but fun is viral. Dorothy Buffum Chandler died last summer and her son Otis Chandler, who at one time ran both Times Mirror Co. and the flagship Los Angeles Times newspaper, stepped down from the board after 36 years. [51], Goodreads librarians improve book information on the website, including editing book and author information and adding cover images. You Grok? Otis and Elizabeth Chandler are founders of Goodreads. [15], Goodreads addressed what publishers call the "discoverability problem" by guiding consumers in the digital age to find books they might want to read. You can follow us on Twitter @HowIBuiltThis, on Instagram @HowIBuiltThisNPR and email us at [email protected]. Otis Chandler built Goodreads in 2006 because he believed in social networking and wanted to see what his friends were reading. Number two, well give you a way to connect with him on Twitter. Alright so it seems to me like where you really learned the business side of things was working at Tickle.com the company that you were with for about six years. Thank you everyone for watching, Im looking forward to your comments and Im looking forward to talking to, actually Im looking forward to your comments lets leave it there. were creating profiles, and I said weve got to make these guys special. We can also go to top, we can hit save to favorites, save it for later, and then keep clicking around. And then I think in mid-January Mashable picked us up. Andrew: Its working now. Interviewee: Sure. As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. [70] [25], In March 2013, Amazon made an agreement to acquire Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013 for an undisclosed sum. Andrew: And I know from looking at Goodreads, from looking at your profile on Goodreads, youre reading Think and Grow Rich an inspiration for me. Otis Chandler has made 2 investments. Andrew: Do you think you couldve learned it if you didnt have an engineering background? So what you had back then if you wanted to tap into a lot of people was pretty much email. And thats okay. Alright, lets go back to when you were at Stanford. Work. Theyre so let down by how people arent paying attention to their book in the world. Like everything else we do at Goodreads, KINDLR was a passion project from start to finish. [30] Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. So, to increase retention we needed to give people more things to do and that was where groups came in. When he decided to launch his own site just for book lovers, a respected colleague told him there was "probably not a very big market there." Otis figured he might prove him wrong, and in . Which means a lot of things, but most people get a lot of value out of, from keeping track of what theyve read. And you look at how many people come in and how many invites get sent and how many people can make it to the end. (from Wikipedia) .more Combine Editions Otis Chandler's books Interviewee: And I could see social networking was probably going to do the same. Otis adalah pemilik perusahaan penerbitan di Amerika Serikat yang juga menerbitkan Los Angeles Times. I think the trick is going back to what you said in the beginning, its having the rock star engineers. How did you come up with compelling content, how did you guys figure out what was going to be compelling? You know theyd spend half a work day going down memory lane, all the books I read in junior high, all the books I read in high school, and its a kind of fun process to go through actually. Nothing big. Interviewee: He was. What was it like at first? See each portfolio image, in big. Or the most hardcore booklovers. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. If you haven't heard of Otis Chandler it's because he spends more time coding his site, Goodreads.com, than promoting himself. Andrew: How much are the business side of things? And this is the way you build any product, right? Elizabeth Chandler @Elizabethkhuri 25 Apr 2019 After 13 years of growing Goodreads from an idea to a community with more than 90 million members, Otis and I are moving on our next chapter. Interviewee: Right. And what I noticed about dating was that you had big generic social networks. You know, maybe in their job theyre a professor of something or a TV personality so that they know theyll be able to market it on their own. So thats important to understand, but its easier said then done. I was talking to Lea, why cant I think of her last name, the founder of Pounce, who told me it that it just feels like a superpower, you dont rely on anyone else you can just build it yourself, from start to finish. Andrew: Can I find people locally to swap books with? Haystack.com, thats where youre gonna find the right web designer for your next project. 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