Shelfari

Shelfari's new look

That time has come again, and Shelfari is getting a new facelift.  We launched a new design a few minutes ago and we're excited for you to try it out.

We spent a lot of time talking with our members, seeking to understand how they use the site and what appeared to be missing in their experience.  In those conversations, we found a very passionate group of members who love Shelfari and regularly use its sharing and expression features.  However, in those conversations we noticed that we could do a better job of serving users who simply want to see what is hot at this very moment.  Those users want to know what are the most exciting books, members, authors, and groups on Shelfari, and give our members a place they could simply browse and discover.  We responded to that request in this redesign.

Tim wrote a very detailed description of what has been updated, and I won’t duplicate that here.  Do check it out to see all of the things that have changed. But let me share some of my personal highlights
You will notice right away that tucked up near the new wood grain header is a new top-level navigation.  We took all of the personal sections from our last header and placed them neatly in the My Shelfari drop-down menu and on your home page.  The new sections—Books, Authors, Members, and Groups—each have their own new discover sections.  

The Books section has a new By Subject tab, where you can dive down into books by their genre.  On each Subject page (such as Romance), you can see which reviewers are getting the most votes for review in that subject, top reviews for that subject, and the top books.  

The Members section has a Just For You tab, where you can see members reading the same book as you, friends of friends, and members with similar shelves.  Time to make some new friends.

The Groups section has updated leaderboards, showing what’s hot in our groups.

There is also a lot going on under the hood, which is really worthy of its own post.  Suffice it to say that the CSS is completely new, the html is a lot lighter, the site loads a lot faster, and the development team feels refreshed at the opportunity to build on this new platform.

We hope you like it.  Please send us your feedback and we’ll do our best to respond quickly.

Dave

NEW! Authors Unbound

Monday marked the launch of our NEW Authors Unbound feature.  We wanted to make it easier for authors and readers to connect on Shelfari.  This new feature does just that!   Every author has an Unbound page that provides a place to share information about the author, discuss their writing and see a list of published works. Authors and readers can jot down what they know about an author, edit what someone else has written, add videos and pictures, and post favorite quotes.

TechCrunch highlighted Authors Unbound today, saying, "With the introduction of these new profiles, Shelfari is poised to become a uniquely rich repository of literary information, and has the potential to become an IMBD for books."

                  

• Authors—Now you have a forum to directly connect with Shelfari readers and fans.  You can customize your page, discuss your work and link to your Shelfari profile.
• Readers—Now you have the opportunity to share what you know and love about your favorite author. You can connect with Shelfari authors and discuss their books or create pages for your favorite authors.  Share your knowledge with the entire Shelfari community.

Come and check out some of our authors: Paulo Coelho, Dean Koontz, Elizabeth Gilbert and Octavia Butler.    

Anyone can contribute.  Anyone can edit.  Authors Unbound.

Enjoy!

Amanda

Who's reading the same books you are?

Explore Shelfari Members, Books and Groups in a whole new way.   Have you ever wondered who’s reading the same book as you are?  Want to know which books are listed the most on everyone’s Wish List?  Now you can on the NEW Explore page. 

Explore Members

To learn more about your fellow Shelfarians, come and see who’s reading the same book as you.  Find out who our newest members are and who’s online. See who has reviewed the most books, created the most tags or added the most books today (this week, this month or all time). 

Explore Books

This is the place to see which books have been recommended to you and which books have the most reviews and comments.  Also, see the top books on the Shelfari communities’ Reading, Plan to Read, Favorite, Wish List, Owned and Read shelves. 

Explore Groups

Find the perfect group for you and see which groups have the most discussion posts, books on their group shelf and members.  You can also find groups by category, newest group and see which groups have been recently active.

Top Tags

See the top 200 tags used by the Shelfari community. 

Enjoy!

Amanda

Shelfari Launches MySpace Application

MySpace Application

We are pleased to announce the launch of our MySpace application.  Now you can add books to your MySpace profile page (Shelfari members can link their accounts to the application). You can click to see a full sized version of your shelf, add & rate books, view your friends who have the Shelfari app and share it with those who don't.  Our (fantastic!) developers have been busy creating this application, so don't miss it. 

 

Recent Friend Activity Feed

The Recent Friend Activity feed has been updated.   Friend activity has been condensed into little snippets, like "Amanda has been busy shelving 24 books, writing a review and rating 11 books”.  Now you can keep up with more friends at once. 

Search Engine

The search for books, authors and friends has been optimized for quicker, better results.  Check it out!

Amanda

Should I read this?

Have you ever been in the following situation: you are browsing someone’s shelf, you see a book that looks interesting, but you would like to get a little bit more information about it? If yes we have something that you should like; we just released a new feature called “Should I read this”. Every time you see a book you can ask for more details about it. You can ask your friends, the owner of the shelf and/or the Shelfari community. Just hover over a book that you haven’t read (either one that you see in the friend’s feed or on a member’s shelf) and select the “Should I read this” button in the popup. You can also type an optional question or provide more details about what you are looking for in the book.

I personally love the community side of “Should I read this.” It allows you to tap the knowledge of the whole Shelfari community and receive personal feedback about books with almost no effort.

Happy reading!
Mike 

Easier widget creation

Last week we shipped several improvements to the widget (for our new readers, the Shelfari widget allows you to display your book collection on your blog / web site). This week we’ve improved the way the widget is created. We offer two types of widgets: Javascript and Flash. With the new widget creation flow you no longer have to worry about which widget is right for you. Just tell us your blog / web site URL and we’ll suggest the best type of widget for you.

To create a widget go to  http://www.shelfari.com/widget

Happy reading!

Mike

Editing multiple books just got easier

Our new shelf has been great for displaying your book collection, but since it’s so visually rich, it’s been fairly hard to use it to efficiently manage it, especially if you have hundreds of books. A number of you have been asking us to solve the problem of moving multiple books from one list to another, tagging all books or changing the book order in large book collections. Today we have good news for all the collectors who contacted us: starting today managing large book collections should be much easier. Just go to your shelf and select “Edit multiple books” button located at the bottom of the shelf. You’ll see an editable list view of all your books. The list view has two different modes:

• The first (default) mode allows you to perform multiple actions on your book collection, by editing each book separately in a list (for instance, tag a couple of books, move a couple of books from one list to another etc.)
• The second mode (which you can access by clicking the “Edit in bulk” button) allows you to perform one action on all selected books (for instance, tag all your books with a single tag)

Between these two modes you can:

• Reorder multiple books
• Tag/remove tags from multiple books
• Add/Remove/Move books between lists
• Apply ratings to multiple books

We hope that the new page will make managing large book collections much simpler.
Happy reading!
Mike

Widget gets better

Shelfari widget has been greatly popular since the first day we released it. Bloggers love its sleek look and the ease of installation. Today we made the widget even better. When your blog visitor hovers over a book in the widget, she’ll see a popup with your review of the book, your rating and the associated tags. If the visitor is on Shelfari she will also be able to add the book to her shelf with the click of a button. And even better, if she purchases the book through your widget you’ll get commission from Amazon, providing that you entered your Amazon Associate ID in the widget wizard. I hope you like the changes!

If you don't have a widget yet, you can create one from http://www.shelfari.com/widget.

Mike 

PS. You can turn the popup on and off from the My Widgets page

Shelf activity

The shelf is a great place for Shelfari members to explore book collections, but one thing that it’s been missing is the history behind it. We just added a new panel to the profile page which should give you an overview of the recent shelf activity of the person whose profile you’re viewing. Take a look:

Get your shelf on the go

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re at a bookstore and you’re wondering what to get for your friend’s birthday? If so, we have good news for you. We just released a simple mobile site which will let you view your shelf and the shelves of your Shelfari friends on your mobile phone. Just go to http://m.shelfari.com in your mobile browser, type your email name and password and voila, you can access all of your friends’ wish lists. Or if you’re using Shelfari to keep track of the books you’re planning to read, just select “My Shelf” and scroll down to your “I plan to read” list. 

Happy reading!
Mike