Shelfari

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

New features in January

We’ve been busy releasing new features. Just in case you haven’t seen them, here’s a quick overview of what we released so far this month:

New way to reorder books. Just select the Organize button located at the bottom of the shelf and drag and drop books into the order you want to see them. You can also drop books onto list names to add them to the lists.

New shelf on profile pages. We integrated the new shelf look into profile pages. Just like on the full shelf, you can hover over books to view profile owner’s reviews, ratings, tags or to add the book to your shelf.

Writing reviews just got easier! Just hover over a book, select “Write review” and start writing. You will no longer be taken to a separate page, but you can write reviews right from your shelf.

Managing friends and friend requests just got easier too! Select “Manage friends” from the dropdown next to the “Friends” tab and you’ll see a page listing all your pending friend invitations. From there you can remind your friends to join your friend list, or remove requests.

Search improvements. Member search is now much faster. We also fixed several bugs in book search.

We’re working on a number of new features, which we’ll be releasing in the coming weeks so stay tuned!

Mike

The New Shelf

You may have noticed that we updated Shelfari’s marquis feature, its Shelf.  The new wood grain shelf fills your screen with all of the books that will fit.  You can quickly see member reviews and flip through the books on the shelf without going to another page.  Beyond the look, the biggest change in the new bookshelf is how you interact with books. As on our Facebook application, Shelfarians can mark their books as:

• Books you've read
• Books you own
• Books in your reading queue
• Books on your wish list
• Your favorite books

Try clicking around to switch between these lists on the left side of the shelf.

The new shelf also notes on which books members have left their fingerprint. 
•    Favorite books have little hearts. 
•    Books with your opinion have a “talk” icon.
•    New books have a red tag.
•    Books you have in common with the shelf owner have a little green bookmark.
•    Rated books have one to five stars.

Mouse over a book and the detail window appears, showing how a Shelfarian relates to a particular book.  When viewing it from your shelf, you will see your reviews and tags (or prompts to add or edit reviews and tags).  When viewing from another’s shelf, you will see his or her reviews, tags and ratings. It also features our new "Add to Shelf" button, which also appears everywhere you can add a book to your shelf (from search results, book details page etc.). By default the button adds the book to the "books you've read" list. But if you click on the little arrow on the right-hand side of the button you'll see a drop-down menu listing all of the options listed above. So now you can add a book to your shelf and add it to a list from one place.

We hope you'll enjoy the new look. You'll see more changes to the Shelf and the bubble in the near feature. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions or want to comment on the current design you can send us input from the Feedback page on Shelfari.com.

Mike

Paging through the Widget

We love books.  We also love the new Web.  So when we get a chance to combine nifty Web 2.0 AJAX with
our shelf, we get pretty excited.  You may have noticed that the thousands of Shelfari widgets out there now have 'next' buttons on them.  Give them a click.  The shelf loads new books quickly and gets ready to respond to all of your clicking (back and forth, forth and back). 

We've had feedback from bloggers that they liked the widget, but wanted a slick way to keep their readers on their site while they perused the blogger's library.  We're committed to serving the blogging community and giving them the tools they want, how they want them.  So keep sending us your feedback.

The paging back and forth also works with the text widget, which takes on the style of your blog or web site and blends in.  If you want to play around with a widget, they're easy to build so give it a try.

Changes to Shelfari's invitations

I thought I'd give up an update on the changes we made Thursday night to invitations on Shelfari.  We made a fairly radical update that makes invitations clearer for everyone finding friends on Shelfari, fixing its core problems  The most significant issue with the former design was that when members had more than five or six friends on Shelfari, the list of their friends not yet using the service dropped below the fold.  So when a member clicked "Send Invite", it sent to the whole list of friends, including that group that the member never saw because those names were pushed below the fold by the list of friends on Shelfari.

Our new design uses two separate pages for the two very separate actions of 1) requesting friendship with those already on Shelfari, and 2) inviting new friends to the site.  Looking at best practices of sizable social networks, we see that this change is necessary and given our size was overdue.  Now that we've divided these actions on separate pages, we feel that Shelfari is back on track to providing the best user experience for our members and their friends.

Mike and Josh plan to talk in greater detail about what we've changed and how if affects our members later this week.

Dave