Social Networks for Everybody archives

When you’re a newcomer to a social network, this is a common sight. It doesn’t have to stay that way, though. Social network sites like Goodreads make it pretty easy to find and add friends.

As we discussed a few days ago, Goodreads tries to make it easy for people using Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, or AOL for e-mail service to match their contacts lists in those mail applications to Goodreads’s list of users. I don’t use any of those, and I find it a little annoying that Goodreads displays this form so prominently, but I can click the (hide this box) link to make it go away. If you do use one of those four mail services, and you give this option a try, let us know how it works for you.

Click on the Friends link near the top of the page to begin.

Goodreads reminds me once again that I have no friends. This is getting depressing, so let’s remedy that now–click the Add Friends link.

Goodreads once again gives Yahoo!, Hotmal, Gmail, and AOL users the option for a quick fix, but I’m going to look underneath that form to the unassuming "Search for Friends" form and enter my friend Aaron’s e-mail address. Then I’ll click the Find Friend button.

Aha, I see that someone named Aaron, living in Lawrence KS, is indeed a Goodreads member. Click Add as a Friend to begin networking with him.

One more step—Goodreads lets us send a little personal message to our new potential friend. This is optional, but considered by many to be good etiquette. Type a short message if you like, then click Add as a Friend.

Before Aaron and I are officially friends in the eyes of Goodreads, Aaron needs to confirm that we are indeed friends. (Note: Some people are stricter about this than others. Some people confirm anyone as a friend, whereas others might only list their friends as being people they know in some form or another outside of Goodreads. This is entirely up to you—we’ll talk a little more about this from the potential friend’s perspective in a moment.)

While I wait on Aaron to confirm that we’re friends, I can have a look around his current, established network to see if he’s already befriended other people I know. This is the other main way to add friends on Goodreads. Hmm, this Dan guy looks like someone I might know—

Hey, this is a guy I went to college with! Good to see he’s still an avid reader. I’ll click he Add as a Friend button on his profile, send the little optional message like we sent to Aaron a few steps ago, and wait to hear back from him.

That’s it for Stratepedia for now—I’ve made contacts with a few potential friends; now I just have to wait to see if they reciprocate. Maybe this is a good time to crack open that copy of Brain Rules sitting on my bookshelf.

Checking my e-mail, I see someone named Stratepedia wants to be my friend on Goodreads. I’ll click the long, kind of ugly web address provided in the e-mail to continue.

Now back on the Goodreads website and signed in as Aaron, I’m given the option to approve the friend request or delete it. Since I know Stratepedia, I’ll approve.

There we go, Stratepedia and Aaron are now friends on Goodreads. I can go back to that book I’ve been reading.

Now, back to Stratepedia: I check my e-mail and see that Aaron has added me back as a Goodreads friend.

I finally have a friend on Goodreads! I can now follow the two methods outlined in this tutorial (find by e-mail, or browse my other friends’ networks) to continue adding to my Goodreads network.

This is entirely up to you. I try to keep my networks limited to people I know in some other capacity; others treat friend-gathering like a sport (the number of "friends" you have on some social networks like Myspace is a status symbol of sorts, and perhaps stretches the definition of "friend" a bit). If I get a request from someone I don’t know I just delete it. I don’t feel a need to reply or explain my actions. Maybe that’s rude, but that’s my approach.

Now, for people I don’t like–that can be slightly trickier. How often are you going to run into this person? Can you duck behind a doorway every time you see the guy walking down the hall? You’re going to have to make a judgement call.

We’ve covered a lot of ground today, but these are good, basic steps to understand for interacting in pretty much any social network—in some form or another, they all have this "friends" concept in their underpinnings. Practice this with your own Goodreads account: Search for Stratepedia (help@stratepedia.org), and feel free to browse Stratepedia’s list of friends and add my personal Goodreads account that way. (Send me a little note to remind me of who you are.)

While writing this tutorial, I see that Goodreads has updated their bookshelf management system. I’ll take a look and post any updates to our previous tutorial that may be necessary. We’ll also start looking at virtual book clubs in Goodreads.

Open the Goodreads website. You may need to log in using the account you created in our previous lesson. Once you’ve signed in, your window should look somewhat like this.

This link takes you to your list of books you’ve read, books you want to read, and books you’re currently reading. (Those are the default bookshelves; you can add custom shelves if you wish.)

This is my "currently-reading" bookshelf. The only book there right now is a so-so collection of essays about the television show Veronica Mars.

Goodreads provides a set of links to my other bookshelves. To look at books I’ve read, I just click on the "read" bookshelf link.

Here’s my "read" bookshelf. I can see the books I’ve read, what I’ve rated them, and any thoughts I had and chose to share about each.

So what do I do once I’ve finished reading my current book?

I want to move Neptune Noir from my "currently-reading" shelf to my "read" shelf, so I first use the "currently-reading" bookshelf link to move to where the book is currently (virtually) located.

Next to the title of the book and my rating for it, I can see the shelf on which my book currently sits. To change this setting, I’ll click the Edit link, then select the "read" shelf. Then I’ll click the Close link. That’s it–my book is now moved from "currently-reading" to my pile of books I’ve read.

Now let’s go over to my to-read bookshelf and select a new book. Click the link to the "to-read" bookshelf.

Of course, if I wanted to re-read a book I’ve already read, I could just as easily jump to the "read" bookshelf to move a book over.

Just as I moved Neptune Noir from currently-reading to read, I can now move The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin from to-read to currently-reading. Click Close when finished.

That’s all there is to managing your virtual bookshelves on Goodreads. This might seem like a lot of to-do for nothing, but in our next lesson, we’ll look at how this helps your friends and colleagues see what you’re reading, what you’ve read, and what’s on your to-read list. That’s what makes Goodreads an example of a social network and a powerful tool for collaborative knowledge-building.

Fire up your favorite web browser and go to http://www.goodreads.com/ . Click the Sign Up button to continue.

Enter your name, e-mail address, and a password. If you’re concerned about privacy, you don’t have to enter your full name. Your e-mail address won’t be visible to other Goodreads users. If you check the "send me new book reviews from my friends" box, you’ll receive periodic e-mail messages to let you know when your Goodreads friends have updated their reading lists. You can also get this information via RSS, if you’d prefer.

Click Next to continue.

If you use Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, or AOL for your e-mail, you can log in here to find friends and colleagues who have already joined Goodreads. This is totally optional. Since I don’t use any of these services, it doesn’t apply to me, so I’m going to click Skip This Step.

Your account is ready to go! Let’s get some books in there. Click Add books by title or author.

It’s easy to add your library to Goodreads. I’ll show you how to add a single book, but there are ways to upload batches of information from other services, such as your Amazon.com wishlist.

Begin by typing in the name or author of your book. In this example I want to add A Whole New Mind, by Dan Pink, so I’ve entered the search string whole new mind. Click Search to continue.

My search has yielded two possible books. The first one is the one I’m after. Hover your mouse over the Add to My Books button for your book, but don’t click just yet!

Goodreads uses a bookshelves metaphor for sorting your books. When you hover your mouse over the Add to My Books button, Goodreads gives you the option to add this book to one of your shelves. By default, you get three shelves: read, currently-reading, and to-read. You can add your own as well–we’ll cover that another time.

For now, I’m just going to add this book to my read bookshelf by clicking the button next to read.

I’m now given a short form in which to post my thoughts about A Whole New Mind and give it a rating. I can also move it to a different shelf–for example, from to-read to currently-reading. Click Save to add your review, then click Close This Box to return to your book search results.

Repeat this process to add additional books to your bookshelves. They can be books you’re reading now, books you’ve already read, or books in your queue.

We’ve covered how to create your Goodreads account and how to begin adding books. Next time we’ll shuffle books from shelf to shelf and begin adding friends, family and colleagues to our Goodreads friends list.