Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Pictures get a lot better

I’ve just released phase one of the new picture system—much better profile pictures:

The new system allows members to post multiple profile pictures, see pictures at large sizes, describe pictures, leave comments on them, and share them with other members. There’s also a tagging feature, so members can organize their pictures and swarm around common tags, like my library.

The new system was designed to be used across the site. I am particularly anxious to get it working on books—so members can show multiple images, and separate out covers, title pages, spine images and so forth.

Read and talk more about it here.

Labels: new features, pictures

7 Comments:

  1. John F. Russell says:

    Wow! Excellent

  2. Carolus says:

    Bravo, Tim, pour ton superbe travail ! It's great !!!!

  3. Pagedove says:

    Just unbelievable how many improvements you are making on LT for your loyal followers. Thank You!

  4. pbnorth says:

    I love the new addition to an already amazing site! If you keep going in this direction I may finally be able to give up all of my other social networking sites once and for all lol! Great job, Tim!

  5. Miranda says:

    Just discovered this new feature, and now I can't wait to get home and try it out! 🙂 What an excellent idea! 🙂

  6. ABW says:

    Horrible idea IMO. Pretty soon LibraryThing will morph into another "Social Networking" site. Ugh!

  7. Tim says:

    I beg to differ. LibraryThing has always combined the bibliographic and the social. The emphasis has always been on relating the two. That's why your books aren't just the data you entered, but a window into all the other editions out there, and all the other people who have them. It's why we obsess about cataloging, say, Thomas Jefferson's library, but then make it easy to compare YOUR library to his.

    In this case, I don't think it's a coincidence that the images are being used in creative, bookish ways. So many of them are simply shots of bookshelves—because book people like looking at other people's bookshelves. And almost none of them are of the "look how hot I am variety." So, sure, we allow both visual depictions of people and connection between people. But the context is so utterly unlike other "social networks" that, well, I think your fear is unfounded.

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