Examining SocialBook
Screen Capture of SocialBook HomePage.
Our group’s natural interest in e-books led us to an exploration of SocialBook itself. We were curious to know more about SocialBook’s origins and its objectives and level of success. Furthermore, we wanted to reflect on the social reading experience.
Our webpage, Exploring Socialbook, includes the following:
- a synopsis of SocialBook within the context of the history of the e-book, including a timeline;
- a brief history of SocialBook, based on an email interview with founder Bob Stein, and online multi-media resources;
- a slideshow demonstrating the key features of SocialBook;
- quotations taken from a collection of all UBC student feedback in the book and in the course platform, describing the ETEC540 SocialBook experience; and
- a simple [5-second] poll which we invite you to click on.
Email Interview with Bob Stein
Contacting Bob Stein was insightful. We learned that our group members at UBC are the only people using SocialBook. The idea has been rendered “an evolutionary dead-end” and by any measure, the project seems to have failed.
The goal was to build a social reading platform and an appropriate distribution functionality that over 5-10 years would begin to challenge Amazon’s dominance in the publishing arena. Unfortunately, SocialBook was unable to raise any money to keep the work going; work on SocialBook stopped over a year ago. Were Mr. Stein to do it again, he would have raised money at the very beginning to hire world-class UX and UI designers.
Today, Mr. Stein concludes that SocialBook is 5-10 years ahead of the market. No big company feels the need to invest in this now and by the time they are ready, it would make more sense to start from scratch rather than try to build on top of an outdated SocialBook framework.
A Note on Confidentiality
We contacted Mr. Stein in the spirit of academic inquiry so that the insights noted above could be shared within our class context. This information should be considered privileged and could potentially interfere with any strategic direction SocialBook may one day choose to take. We, therefore, did not obtain permission to share the details of his response publicly on the site.
We hope this microblog serves as a reflection point for students that we can share with the project founders and future social book readers.
Thank you.
Parm, Haneefa, Julia
Great topic choice girls!
You added some really unique components with the interview with Mr. Stein and incorporating the quotes from UBC student feedback making it really relevant and engaging for the reader. I enjoyed you website!
I appreciate your exploration of Socialbook – you’ve really added to my understanding of what it is trying to accomplish.
My reaction to Socialbook was mixed. I didn’t enjoy the reading experience on Socialbook, partly because I prefer to engage with a book myself before I start discussing it with others. However, I do like to have the conversation about the book linked directly to the text of the book in the way that Socialbook does.
Hi, thanks for your comments! For me, reading our collective reactions to the format helped me feel I wasn’t alone in my own ups and downs. I love the idea of SocialBook and feel that social reading will evolve (in some way, commenting on news articles online and replying to comments is similar). For practical reasons, I ended up reading it on Kindle first and then transferring my notes to SocialBook. It was onerous, but I need a mobile platform. I didn’t realize not only how much I read digitally, but how much I read on the go, until this experience.
Hi Parm, Haneefa, Julia,
Nice work on your group website! I share some of the same concerns about limitations with Social book, however, I am so intrigued with the possibility of online shared reading and commenting that is available while using it. I liked your use of the timeline, and I really appreciated the links to all the eReading tools attached to your profiles…I plan to check out get pocket.com and readability.com, etc. Thanks for including those.
~Sandra
Girls, you have shared great information about social book. This was my first time using social book. I initially struggled to use it due to some software issues. One of the biggest challenges that I faced during our weekly reading was missing page number. Due to this issue I was forced to look up for the pdf’s of the chapters. Its ability to share comments makes this technological resource highly engaging and useful. Good job ☺