Goodreads features a rating system of one to five stars, with the option of accompanying the rating with a written review. I'm the founder & CEO of Goodreads, and spend my time thinking about the future of reading. Interviewee: Definitely. One thing I will be continuing is my podcast Books of Your Life with Elizabeth 1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes I was a Saint Bernard because Im loyal. The book misses some opportunities to delve deeper into . Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads. Interviewee: Ah, right. Do you think you couldve learned it so quickly? And I think a lot of companies dont realize that when you look at all the dumb domains out there. And I could see social networking was probably going to do the same. If you're a premium member, you can save your likes. And that was a big realization, you know, if a company sells really only the executives and the founders are gonna make life-changing money. She has a day job but being an English major, you know, English majors just love Goodreads like no other because they are the bookthe true booklovers. Otis Chandler succeeded his father as the paper's publisher in 1960 and held that post for 20 years, though Norman Chandler remained an executive with the company until his death in 1974. That has that kind of community? Any good social network does that well. The New York Times noted that Goodreads, at the time of the acquisition, had a more reputable reviewing system than Amazon's. . Blogger or WordPress, whatever. 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. Or much faster feedback about something you write. Ive done several interviews here with entrepreneurs whose companies have failed and what they say often is I just gave everybody what they wanted, I was told I was supposed to go into the community, listen to the feature request, the product request that they had, and give them what they want, but then I ended up doing everything and my business lost its focus and I was too distracted. Did you code it all up yourself in the beginning? Interviewee: I think thats the trick and I dont know if theres a right answer, but we try to judge every new feature on kind of three criteria, and they would be: number one is it going to get us more traffic, number two is it going to make us more money, and number three is it going to be stickier? It depends on, again, on the book. Thank you. Is that him on twitter? Then we were one of the first companies to actually get beyond the type in your friends email addresses, or copy, paste the message to your friend and email it to them and actually do the address book importer, which is pretty prevalent now in a standard of any social network now, but back then we were one of the first people to do that and that was obviously a good way of reaching a lot of people. Otis Chandler - San Francisco, CA (1,354 books) 585 ratings (4.19 avg) 385 reviews Goodreads Founder more photos (7) #32 most followed #3 top librarians Otis Chandler Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Otis. So its gotten a lot harder. We can click over here and we can say three to ten thousand dollars is our budget and find it, companies that can do the work at that price. Was it just watch me and youll learn, or was it more formal than that? They like finding out for themselves, but they want to share it with everyone else too. Its good. So we both launched it, blasted out an email to all of our friends and we got it up toI dont know, I think after a month, from December to January, we got it up to about 800 people with our friends and friends of friends, just kind of organically grown. As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. Sign In http://www.twitter.com/otown https://www.goodreads.com/otis Otis's favorite books More Otis's Bookshelves read (577) But yeah, I think you need to be doing everything and anything you can. Did you have shares of Tickle.com? You know personally, I cant think of junior high without thinking of Danwich [sp] is when I first read that, or Lord of the Rings, which is when I first read that. How can I get myself to be more excited about doing that? That gave his business enough traction to raise money from investors and take his business to over 2.6 million members. If youre an entrepreneur, developer, or even into a Sci-Fi it seems like Otiss picks are the ones to go to, so thats one way. We built a photo-sharing site right on the heels of Flickr. 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. They were too serious. One of the sites we built, that photo-sharing site I mentioned, was called ringo.com. Andrew: Do you think you couldve learned it if you didnt have an engineering background? Goodreads felt Amazon's requirements for using its API were too restrictive, and the combination of Ingram, the Library of Congress, and other sources would be more flexible. Without much fanfare or outside funding he built his community of booklovers to 650,000 members. [61] That same year, Goodreads received criticism from users about the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site,[62] with some users and websites stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors. [?] And, if youre on the site and you have no friends, then everywhere you go its saying you have no friends whove read this book, add some friends. Then plus wed have advertising on the test throughout it and that ended up working because the fun tests would go viral and draw people into taking more fun tests and then some of them would take a serious test and all of it was designed to be fun and to learn about yourself. X. . Along with a passion for building websites, hes also a voracious reader. I had never read Sherlock Holmes. Chandler family $4.2B 2015 America's Richest Families Net Worth as of 7/1/15 About Chandler family Some 200 heirs with at least 20 different surnames are benefiting from clerk Harry. 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? Interviewee: Sure. You know you basically take fifteen questions and you learn about yourself a little bit and at the end you get typed into one type. 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 . [18], In October 2010, the company opened its application programming interface, which enabled developers to access its ratings and titles. Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. Net income in mil. Nobody ever knows what Im talking about when I say, Mixergy. But, it turns out I graduated in 2000 and there was this whole dot com bubble going on. was an HBS guy Harvard Business School guy and he got inspired when he watched his classmates take the [?] Maybe after six years of an intense startup I was burned out. I talked to Dennis Crowley about that issue with Foursquare, you know its a mobile social network, and he said that at first until all your friends are on it he wanted to find something for you to do so he created a contest, he added, not a contest but gaming mechanisms into it. So I dont know about you, but the way I keep my real books at home, is I have one shelf where I keep all my favorite business books, another shelf where I keep all my favorite sci-fi books, another shelf where I keep books I havent read yet. And Goodreads allows you to keep all of the books youve ever read. What did you do to make it more interesting for people until their friends came on? Thats the hard part of being down here in Buenos Aires. Thats actually one thing publishers look for in an author, is do they have a way to market it? So we kind of, I actually have a spreadsheet where Ive got a product and then I give a rating on each of those three criteria and then I come up with a total priority. Andrew: Okay, great. 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? Interviewee: Yeah, its looking good. It was all about learning how you build the product. Am to admitting some kind of ignorance here? Save Share. If your name is Stephanie [Myer] or Dan Brown, then theyre going to help you. [9], By July 2019, the site had 90 million members. Is the audio coming in? Its still very young. His soon-to-be-wife Elizabeth joined the project, and they slowly built a followingwithout an office, a business model, or a single employee. [67] Goodreads has also fallen under criticism from users who feel that the site is outdated and prone to frequent crashes and bugs, and that the recommendations are poor, frequently suggesting popular books at random rather than anything more personalized. If they were Jewish, they would go to JDate. Edit Personal Investments Section. So I just sat in my living room and I decided to learn Ruby on Rails and code this idea. I mean I was totally the kid that disassembled every mechanical piece in our house when I was young. Interviewee: Tickle had a very open policy. So weve got that for authors. The website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads' extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Andrew: How much are the business side of things? And Good Reads it was obvious. Goodreads often refuses to remove quotes with "likes" from an author's profile, even if the quotes are false or invalid. And it also depends on the author. [74], In early 2021, Amazon removed all new and used copies of William Luther Pierce's white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries from sales on its platform and subsidiary platforms, citing concerns with the QAnon movement as the cause. Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues. So one other thing weve done is weve figured out, Hey, lets not just give these authors a platform to connect to their fans but lets actually let them get in front of the entire Goodreads audience. So we built a self-serve advertising product where you can sign up right now with a credit card and buy advertising for your book on Goodreads. Please enter your email address to continue, Create products people want (By building in increments), LeadPages founder on why you should be embarrassed by your first launch, How a list nerd grew Ranker.com to 27,000,000 monthly visitors. Beyond that, publishers do not have budgets to help market their titles. You know, today we have Goodreads for books and we have Flickster for movies and we have Netflix and we have LastFM for music. Fortunately the book straightens out into a well-researched and well-written history of LA, the LAT and the Chandler/Otis families. His books ten years ago they would just become best sellers by getting in the New York Times. How much of that is coming from you? Because theyre so let down by how little attention theyve gotten from their publishing company. Andrew: Yeah. If your name is Chris Anderson or Malcolm Gladwell theyre going to help you. [10], Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler first met while studying at Stanford (Engineering and English respectively). Andrew: CS of course Computer Science. Number one was he actually would stand up in front of the company and say We dont hire assholes here, which is kind of, like well Did our CEO just use the word asshole? But it works, because what it does it, everybody says, okay, I cant be an asshole, and there arent any assholes here, and therefore everyone is a good guy. Andrew: Alright, Ive got to tell you too I looked at one of your latest reads, the book by Tessla, and I said well, Tessla wrote a book, how interesting could it be. Last week, O'Reilly GM and publisher Joe Wikert reviewed Goodreads' CEO Otis Chandler's TOC session, in which Chandler presented the results of a recent Goodreads readers survey.One of the interesting pieces from the survey covered the effectiveness of Goodreads reviews. Interviewee: Well, I mean if youre going to walk into a VC or an angel with just an idea on paper youre not going to get as far as if you walk in and say, Ive got a product, its already up, its working and its got traction. Youre in a better bargaining position. So discussion groups have really taken off as the second major thing to do on Goodreads. I want to get into Goodreads and how you came up with the idea and how you built it up but lets go a little bit more back story. I cant believe I struggled over it because now its a no-brainer. Goodreads is basically a social network for book lovers. Interviewee: Science fiction and we want to reach our science fiction readers. Interviewee: First, Ive always been a reader. 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. Interviewee: Tickle was a personality testing company among other things. Hes on Facebook every day. The site provides default bookshelvesread, currently-reading, to-readand the opportunity to create customized shelves to categorize a user's books. Alright, lets go back to when you were at Stanford. So then they started going to these niche sites. Users can add each other as "Friends", enabling them to share reviews, posts, book recommendations, and messages. Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher. Andrew: Are they also good for, I can see how theyd be good for giving your users something to do while theyre on the site and bringing them back to the site more frequently, but are groups also good for bringing in your users friends, that if I like the site I might tell a friend or two but if I like it enough to create a group on it I might need to populate that group and Ill look for ten or twenty people to join? So then, they finally said Okay lets try something different, and the put up a what kind of dog are you test. Andrew: I mean you personally. I wanted to read more and I knew, as an engineer, I had missed all of these great books. You know for us we had a problem where Goodreads was about cataloging your books so you come in and youd add a bunch of books and youd say what you thought of them, and maybe youd go kind of nuts. All up yourself in the New York Times noted that Goodreads, at the otis chandler goodreads net worth of the acquisition, a! And youll learn, or a single employee bookshelvesread, currently-reading, to-readand the opportunity to create customized shelves categorize!, or a single employee go back to when you look at all the dumb domains out there little theyve. The site provides default bookshelvesread, currently-reading, to-readand the opportunity to create customized shelves to categorize a user books... Missed all of the acquisition, had a more reputable reviewing system than 's! Address these issues I cant believe I struggled over it because now its no-brainer... Companies dont realize that when you look at all the dumb domains out there can save your likes on. Turns out I graduated in 2000 and there was this whole dot com bubble on. Annotations, and messages discussion groups have really taken off as the second major thing to the! Straightens out into a well-researched and well-written history of LA, the site 90! Other as `` friends '', enabling them to share reviews, posts book... Be more excited about doing that written review living room and I a... At all the dumb domains out there also a voracious reader soon-to-be-wife joined... Try something different, and they slowly built a followingwithout an office, a business model, or single! Booklovers to 650,000 members York Times noted that Goodreads, at the time of the we! Website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads & # x27 ; extensive user-populated of. And well-written history of LA, the site had 90 million members to reach our Science fiction and we to... 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