I’ve added some spice to the home page—a section showing the books added recently. It updates every five seconds. The “last five minutes” section can go above 600. This one was taken during a slow patch.* But, hey—two Harry Potters!

It’s an experiment to see if being more up-front about the size and dynamism of the site will draw more users in. As one user ably described it, LibraryThing’s home page looks about the same now as it did twelve months ago. See more discussion of the experiment here. Whether it stays on the home page, we’re going to playing with features like this.

Tomorrow: Tags grow up.

*Saturday night is our nadir. And this weekend is for reading Harry Potter, not playing with LibraryThing. I note, for example that the Hogwarts Express group, one of our most active, has gone from near hysteria to eerie quiet!

Labels: features