Facebook + Google Books + Readum = Online Book Discussion?
People caught up with the Google Books opt-out settlement controversy may have missed an interesting article by Jason Boog that appeared on March 21, 2011 entitled “Facebook & Google Books Meet Online”. The article included a MP3 link to an interview on Morning Media Menu with Travis Alber who co-founded ReadSocial with the intention of connecting books and social networks. To facilitate this end, ReadSocial created Readum which is an add-on for Mozilla Firefox and an extension for Google Chrome that makes books accessed from the Google ebookstore “social”.
Readum facilitates Facebook users adding favourite authors and books to their Facebook page by highlighting a paragraph from a Google Book, adding a personal comment or note, and then sharing the book excerpt on Facebook. The intent is to pair up hundreds of millions of Facebook members with millions of Google Books and encourage book discussion.
Sources:
Alber, Travis, “Readum…and Google ebooks” [Video], March 21, 2011. <http://vimeo.com/user6312450/readum>. Accessed March 25, 2011.
Boog, Jason, “Facebook & Google Books Meet Online”, mediabistro.com [Website], March 21, 2011. <http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/facebook-google-books-meet-online_b26018>. Accessed March 25, 2011.
Morning Media Menu, [Interview with Travis Alber] [Audio MP3], March 21, 2011.
<http://static59.mediabistro.com/content/MorningMediaMenu3-21.mp3>. Accessed March 25, 2011.
Readum [Website]. < http://www.readum.com/>. Accessed March 25, 2011.
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