Monday, May 24th, 2010

LibraryThing Facebook integration, phase 1

LibraryThing/Facebook integration

We’ve just introduced “phase one” of LibraryThing-Facebook integration. It’s been a ridiculously long time coming, but it’s here. The framework for the project is built and one feature has been implemented—review posting.

Posting Reviews. Phase one is posting reviews. Whenever you write or edit a review you can elect to post the review to Facebook, where it appears as on the right. It also links back to the review page on LibraryThing.

On your Edit profile: Sites/apps page you will find a handy checkbox to make the “Share to Facebook” default to “on” (unless you’ve already published the review, in which case you must explicitly make it republish it).

Sharing via Facebook adds the LibraryThing Books app., which is a Facebook app. for LibraryThing. Right now it does nothing except post your reviews as requested.

So, what else should it do? (Everything, okay, but what is most important?) Come talk about it here.

Credits. The programming this time around was done by Mike (LTMike). Members of the Board for Extreme Thing Advances provided valuable help.

Labels: facebook, new features

24 Comments:

  1. Joyce Lee says:

    I think this is greatfor Librarything because I never knew anything about LT until I was on FB one day and met someone who is an avid reader and she mentioned this site called LT and I was hooked.

    joycedlee

  2. Sean O'Leary says:

    I list LT on my FB page under websites. I try to tell people about it but it sure would be nice to have an LT app I could have on my page to draw some attention of the readers out there. I think this is going to be great.

  3. Wosret says:

    Yay! I’ve been doing this manually. 🙂

  4. horace says:

    Facebook? That’s the big announcement?

    I was hoping for something like a newly-discovered Shakespeare play. Or at the very least a Faulkner short story.

    Facebook? As an LT user, I rather thought myself above Facebook.

  5. Vanye says:

    Are you guys serious? 8^(

  6. Marjatta says:

    Curious!
    I accept all tools to find/discuss books!

  7. Fiona says:

    I think this is a great idea! To have your review in your live feed on Facebook will hopefully encourage others to join Libary Thing as well. Facebook may not be as ‘sophisticated’ as Horace seems to think Library Thing is, but if it encourages people to read your review and join, then that’s great.

    You should have a ‘where did you hear about Library Thing?’ option on when new people join (can’t remember if you have already!) and put Facebook down as an option to see how successful this is.

  8. Polly says:

    I think it is great. I have been posting my reviews to my facebook page. We live in the world of social media, facebook and twitter are the mediums society embraces as a from of communication (regardless of personal averseness)choice is ever present for positive application. I enjoy connecting to share literature, opera/music, and the arts with my friends.

  9. Rachel says:

    I thought that you lose your copyright to anything posted to Facebook. I guess that seems minor and pointless worry (who’s going to collect and publish my book reviews? ha!). But. Still. Anything I write should stay mine and thus I don’t publish stuff to Facebook.

    Perhaps just posting a link is different? Help me understand oh smarter people than me!

  10. Tina says:

    tututhefirst on LT here—thanks for suggesting the truncating review to link to LT full review. I already voted. I had been just about to send you a suggestion to do something like that. I tend to write fairly lengthy reviews but always break up the text to make them readable. THey’re awful in FB at present. Hope we can get that changed to Tim’s proposal.

  11. Ashley says:

    I love this! I just tested it out for myself 🙂 Very happy with this new addition!

  12. Jess says:

    I think its a great idea and a excellent way to show Lt to the world and get more members !!!!

  13. Deb says:

    I’m glad to see this. I have wanted to be able to share my LibraryThing reviews with my Facebook friends.

  14. Kim says:

    I’d like to put a Library Thing widget on my Facebook page. Will Facebook accept an LT widget?

  15. Kathy says:

    Yes, I do love this, Yes sir I do….

  16. Eric says:

    Cool! I’m double publishing everything through LT and Living Social: Books on FB. I hope you can do some similar things that they are doing so I don’t have to anymore.

  17. Paul says:

    Awesome! Now I can dump that horrible Visual Bookshelf app from Facebook that I was copying and pasting my LT reviews into.

  18. Inks says:

    This is great. Thank you!

    Soon will there be a way to show our blog widgets with book covers on Facebook, too? (Or is there already and I just can’t find it?)

  19. Menagerie says:

    I would like to be able to recommend a book up on FB with a LibraryThing button. It could take the person to the book’s page on LT. I don’t know that I would really post that many of my reviews on my FB page. I have a lot of friends that could really care less. (Okay most of those people are family, but what are you gonna do?)

  20. David says:

    GoodReads seems to provide information about when people start reading things, when they rate things, and probably a few other things.

    I think that the best thing for LT to do with Facebook is give users the options. A fully functional LT facebook app would give me options to share any or all of

    1) adding books to my collection
    2) rating books
    3) reviewing books
    4) adding books to, or removing books from, my “Currently reading” collection (or maybe just letting me choose which collections I want to have announced on facebook).

    The current treatment of reviews: that they’re announced, and that there’s a link to _my_ review of the book is perfect. I think that for most other things, having the FB news item link to the work in LT is probably the best thing to do. Perhaps for the collections option, it could also provide a link to view that collection.

  21. Rebecca says:

    Will there be any way to transfer all the reviews I’ve written on FB’s “I’m Reading” app to the Library Thing app? Outside of cutting and pasting one by one, that is.

  22. I don’t know how to link LibraryThing to Facebook. I clicked in the square, but the link, I do not understand.

  23. cntrydrms says:

    I frequently recommend LT to my Facebook friends who share my love of books. Several of them have joined and are enjoying all LT has to offer.

  24. Rakisha says:

    Where’s the LIKE button…this is great 🙂 I too am looking forward to finally being able to use LT on FB rather than Visual Bookshelf. I find the reviews and comments so much more relevant and reliable.

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