The Anobii Blog

Anobii beta website updates

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:46:00 +0100

Today we are opening up the beta of the new Anobii website worldwide.

Many of you will know that the Anobii website has been struggling to cope as it’s got bigger. We’ve been doing a lot to try to make this better, but unfortunately it’s not easy to fix these sorts of problems for a site like Anobii that’s grown over several years.

After a lot of consideration, we decided it was necessary to rebuild Anobii so that we could grow in the future. We’re running a beta of a new website alongside the existing site so that we can test and learn what we need the new site to become. The Anobii beta site has been live in the UK for a few months now but after requests from Anobii users around the world, we’ve now opened the beta up to be viewed worldwide. The beta will run alongside the existing Anobii website for the foreseeable future. The Anobii beta site is only in English right now, but we will be adding other languages.

Both the existing Anobii website and the beta website are using the same data. You can login to the beta using your existing Anobii username and password, and you should see all of your books, reviews and people. If your profile on the beta website doesn’t have the books, reviews and people you expect, please let us know and we’ll look into it for you.

Here’s my profile page on the Anobii beta…

We want Anobii to be the best place to find better books, but we also want to help you buy and read books. That’s why we’re introducing ebooks for sale (only in the UK to begin with), along with ereader apps for iPad, iPhone and Android. However, social networking, conversation and discussion about books will remain at the heart of Anobii and we’re currently working hard to introduce the right tools to facilitate this.

New features are being added over time, and we’re testing the new site with book lovers - both with existing Anobii readers and also with those who are new to online book communities. This feedback has helped us a lot in deciding which features to prioritise and how to make the site as easy to use as possible.

Some things we’ll be working on soon include:

Voting on reviews (similar to helpfulness points)
Adding a space on profile pages for you to leave messages (similar to shoutbox)
Commenting on topics (similar to threads on groups)
Better homepage
Suggestions of topics you’d like to follow, based upon the books you’ve read (a new compatibility tool)

Many features haven’t been added to the beta yet. In particular, there’s a lot we want to do around conversation and discussion. We’ve already had some great feedback about what’s special about the current Anobii for encouraging conversation and we’d love to hear from you about what’s important to you, what you’d hate to be without and if there’s anything you don’t like about the current Anobii that you’d like to change.

You can leave comments below, or here on Get Satisfaction, or by using the ‘feedback’ link in the footer on the beta site.

A book page on the Anobii beta…

Thank you in advance for any feedback you are able to give.

Mairead
Anobii.com

Exclusive Opportunity - Get Your Reviews Published!

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:26:00 +0000

Would you like one of your Anobii book reviews to be published in a magazine? This is the opportunity we’re giving two of our readers this week. Our friends at We Love This Book magazine would like to feature two reviews from Anobii readers on two of the book titles below.

We Love This Book will feature one review for a Fiction title and one review for a Non-Fiction title of books published in 2012. The selected reviews will feature in the April 2012 magazine of We Love This Book with credit given to the winning reviewers.

The Details - It’s Easy!

Click the below title you would like to review, you will be directed to the Anobii site book page for the corresponding title. (If you are outside the UK or USA, please click International links provided at the bottom of this blog post)
Click “Add A Review” button
Write a 120-150 word review, written in English. Please do not write more than one review per title.
Submit your review by 11pm GMT on Thursday 22^nd March 2012
That’s it!

We will select the one review for a Fiction title and one review for a Non-Fiction title on the morning of Friday 23^rdMarch 2012. We will notify the writers of the selected reviews in due course.

The Books

Fiction Titles:

Non-Fiction Titles:

International Links:

My Daughter, My Mother

An African Love Story

A Message of Hope from the Angels

French Children Don’t Throw Food

Trafficked

Inside Apple

A Universe from Nothing

Everybody Knew

Happy reviewing!

Brian

Anobii’s New Look

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:31:00 +0000

In our last blog post Matteo mentioned the new Anobii logo and colour scheme. Many of you will already have noticed some of this migration to the brand in certain places. Particularly the users of the beta site in the UK, our Twitter followers, and users of our Facebook Books App will have already seen this. Today marks the next stage in our brand migration.

The new logo and colour scheme will be represented not only on the website but everywhere you interact with Anobii including Facebook, Twitter, and our Mobile Apps. The Anobii brand has been updated to reflect the joy of discovery, our active community of readers, and the social nature of books. After all, “Together we find better books”!

What’s Next?

From today you’ll see the new branding reflected on our Facebook page as we migrate to Facebook Timeline. Check it out: www.facebook.com/aNobii.
By migrating to timeline we hope to be able to give our Facebook Fans more content and features that will continue to complement the Anobii experience.

In the coming weeks you’ll notice our migration to the new logo and styling on the website and every place you interact with Anobii. We hope to create a consistent Anobii experience across all of our products and design is only one aspect of this.

Please take a look and let us know what you think. We really like our new look and we hope you do too!

Click here to see the newly designed Anobii Facebook page.

Brian
anobii.com

Turning the (web)page

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:45:26 +0000

By Matteo Berlucchi, CEO, Anobii

In 2012 there will be many pages turned at Anobii and I thought it would be good for you to hear an update from me about what has been happening behind those bookshelves.

As you will have surely noted if you are based in the UK, we have launched a new website replacing the existing anobii.com. This new site has different functionality from the previous one but worry not, there is a good reason for everything! Here’s a bit of explanation into why the two sites are very different and how they will converge in the future.

Old code = lots of problems
The original Anobii website was built in 2006, the same year when Facebook was launched! As technologies move on, the site ended up being quite tired from a technical perspective and the increased traffic resulted in a rapid decline in performance.

Our team in London started rebuilding the platform from the ground up in late spring 2011 and our strategy has expanded from the original idea of ‘listing your books and finding similar people’ to include buying ebooks and collaborating with the rest of the community in grouping books in logical segments that we call ‘topics’.

Here’s a simple comparison table

_______________________________________________________________________________________

We have decided to focus on the new functionality first and then go back and add the old functionality a piece at the time. We estimate that the majority of the work will be finished in the next 3 months at which point we will have most of the original functionality plus the new features on the new platform.

As with books, we got to the point where we had to turn the page in order for Anobii to grow into a sustainable business.

Your books and data is the same and won’t be lost
We are building the new site off the existing database so all of the data that you have built over time is still there. If you add a new book to your Anobii library it will be visible on both the original and the new site. All your reviews, friends, etc. are all there and still accessible from the old site. We are going to run the two sites in parallel for the foreseeable future so if you don’t like the new site you are welcome to switch to the old one but do come back regularly as we are adding lots of great new stuff to the new site and we are confident we will win most hearts and minds.

If you like Facebook
We are making it even easier for Facebook users to enjoy Anobii directly inside Facebook. Greg and his team in Hong Kong are working very hard porting every piece of functionality from Anobii directly into Facebook. Check out their work in progress - it looks great!

Together we find better books
Our focus remains the discovery of great books and we believe that the new platform will allow us to help readers find even better titles, people and topics.

We have also refreshed our look with a simpler logo and a cleaner interface and colour scheme. We know that what really counts is the functionality we offer (as they say “the food matters more than the plate”), but a clean interface helps with usability. We like the new look quite a lot and we hope you like it too.

(The new icon with the two ii’s in anobii which recall two people to highlight the social nature of the service)

We hope you will stay with us during this exciting journey through 2012 which will take us to a more grown up and enjoyable Anobii. We are sure to make mistakes, oversee or underestimate things so we need the watchful eye of our community to help us. Please let us know what you think or if you see/think of anything that can make the service better for you and your friends.

Remember that only together we can find better books!

Matteo
Anobii.com

A new Anobii website for UK readers

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:37:00 +0000

For the past couple of months, we have been trialling a new version of the Anobii website and we now think it’s time to open it up to all readers in the UK. From next week, anyone in the UK going to Anobii.com will see our new website.

We are gradually building more features and as we do that, we will be running both sites alongside each other so that existing users will be able to switch back to the current website if they want to. In particular, please note that we are planning to port most of the key functionality you have been enjoying in the previous version of the site and none of your data will be lost.

As we continue this development phase, the current Anobiil.com website will remain unchanged for Anobii readers outside of the UK. We hope to roll out the new service globally later this year.

Thanks so much to everyone who has offered us helpful and constructive feedback whilst the website has been in beta. If you’re interested in hearing more about the new developments, stay tuned for the next few blog posts over the coming weeks where different members of the Anobii team will be introducing some of the exciting new designs, features and improvements in our new website.

Danielle
Community Manager

Reading copyright free ebooks (UK only!)

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:48:16 +0000

As some of our users have been asking about our copyright free ebooks, I thought of sharing some more information on how to read free ebooks with Anobii.

We are offering the Project Gutenberg catalogue to our readers via our apps. We have an iPhone and iPad app and an Android version is coming very soon. These apps are linked to your Anobii account (on the beta site for now) and they sync your ebook library so that you can enjoy reading these ebooks for free while also being able to write notes, make highlights and sync your bookmarks.

We are in the process of cleaning up these free ebooks and will soon be able to also offer them as downloadable ePub files so that you can load them on your ereader. This option is going to be available in a couple of weeks.

So, for now you can only enjoy the copyright ebooks we have in our catalogue if you download one of our ereading apps.

For our non-UK users, we will be able to open the new services to the whole user base in the next few months.

Thanks for the patience!

Matteo

Anobii wishes you all a very merry Christmas

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:32:33 +0000

Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse.

I’d finished my book
And turned off the light,
Head on the pillow
My eyes were shut tight.

All of a sudden,
I heard a page turn,
The book i’d just finished
Had started to burn.

An elderly man
Of six feet or more,
Entered the room
But not through the door.

A sack in one hand
Piece of coal in the other,
‘Hmm, naughty or nice?’
I heard him consider.

With over thirty reviews
Of books marked as finished,
With points for being helpful
The coal just diminished.

With a smile on my face
I saw the shelf heave
My wish list delivered
Why wouldn’t you believe?

Anobii wishes you all a very merry Christmas.

Take a closer look at the books in our Anobii Office Library here.

Frankfurt - ers

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:35:00 +0100

One word describes Frankfurt quite well – sausages! We ate them everyday.

This week we were visiting the world’s largest book fair and there is no arguing with the fact that as first time visitors, we were overawed with the size of it. Think of the largest exhibition hall you’ve ever been to, then times it by at least 10.

But we weren’t there just eating sausages obviously, we had one of the most exciting projects to start telling people about. Anobii. ‘How do you solve the problem of book discovery online?’ they asked. ‘Try Anobii’ we replied. ‘How do you make reading social?’ they asked. ‘Try Anobii’ we replied.

We were proud to showcase the first cut of our Anobii 2.0 beta site, and it was lucky that we had this video prepared because the WiFi connection was painful.

We had some interesting meetings with representatives from Italy, Spain, Germany and the UK publishing industry, met some great people including blogger and fan of Anobii Luca Conti, we got some good coverage in the Frankfurt Fair Daily*, saw lots and lots of books, and flew back to London only to be offered a sausage based snack on the plane.

There’ll be no more sausages for a while, but we can never have enough books!

Danielle
Community Manager
Anobii

*Frankfurt Fair Daily pages 22 & 23

We're back on the blog

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:38:00 +0100

Since the last blog post, we have been sitting twiddling our thumbs and dreaming into space…is anyone still here?

Actually, that’s a lie. The last 6 months have been incredibly busy, but that’s no excuse for not keeping our blog up-to-date. Please accept our apologies. There has been a lot of interaction with the Anobii community on Facebook and Twitter since I started as Community Manager (thank you to those who have contributed) but as pointed out by one of our users on Facebook (thanks Robbie), we should also make sure that important messages about changes and potential problems are also posted on the website so that anyone who isn’t on Facebook or Twitter can be kept informed.

So, this post marks the beginning of reinstated use of our Anobii blog.

The next few months will represent an important stage in Anobii’s history. Many of you have noticed and duly complained about the website’s poor performance recently. We are aware of your concerns but we beg for your patience as we try and build Anobii into a site which will have longevity. The reasons behind certain features not working e.g. search, tagging, compatibility etc. all stem from the fact that the infrastructure and the code is 6 years old and currently is struggling to deal with the popularity Anobii has accrued.

We want the Anobii community to grow, we want everyone who loves books to enjoy being a member of a global book club in an environment which helps them to find their next great book to read. We have recruited great new people into the Anobii team and we are well set up to improve the technology, which is so vital to keeping Anobii alive.

We are also very excited to be launching a new Anobii service over the coming months which will enable the Anobii community to find, buy and read books using new discovery tools and cloud-based ereading apps. We are going to trial this in the UK first because our first ebook offering will be in the English language, and will roll out to other countries and with non-English language ebooks as soon as possible.

Please keep your eyes open for new blog posts and messaging on the website and remember that you are always welcome to share your ideas on the Get Satisfaction support pages to help us shape the future of Anobii.

Danielle
Community Manager
Anobii

Good News

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 08:04:20 +0000

I am very happy to let you know that after 4 years of hard work, we have secured the necessary resources to deliver our vision of a social network for book lovers which will help you find the best books, buy them and then share your reading experience with other people.

This vision is why I set up aNobii and I am so excited that we will finally deliver it!

How? It has been made possible by teaming up a UK start-up that recently secured backing from investors led by HMV Group (owner of HMV, Waterstone’s and 50% of 7digital). HarperCollins, Penguin and The Random House Group are also supporting the company.
What? Don’t worry as we will preserve the core aNobii functionality (library, reviews, friends, wishlist etc). We will be developing more tools around discovery, the ability to purchase books (in particular ebooks) and making the reading experience more fun.
When? We are very busy working on the enhancements and on the new parts of the platforms that we want to create so it will be a few more months before you will be able to see what we call aNobii 2.0. Good things come to those who wait…

And lastly, it would have been impossible to get here without the support of our dedicated and loyal book lovers. So, thank you very much and I hope you continue to support aNobii for the years to come in the same way we will continue to develop aNobii to be the best place for you to find new books and new friends.

Greg

New aNobii iPhone App plus chance to win free iPhone

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:11:00 +0000

To celebrate our new iPhone App we have launched a competition on Facebook to win a free iPhone 4: http://bit.ly/anobiicomp

New aNobii iPhone App
Helping you find and share great books on the move!

The new iPhone App has a super fast barcode scanner that means you can add all your old books to your virtual library really quickly plus you can read independent reviews about books before you buy.

Download the iPhone App and let us know what you think!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/anobii/id327440393?mt=8

Here’s how it works:

At home: Rediscover all your old books and build your virtual library – this is really quick with our speedy barcode scanner.

On the move: You see someone reading a great book, search and add to your wish list before you forget!

In a bookstore: Scan the barcode and read independent reviews before you buy. Always have your wish list with you when you go into a bookstore to remind you of the books you want to read.

A faster aNobii

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:13:00 +0000

We are happy to announce that our speed improvement initiative is making good progress and showing results.

Before: 69% of pages were generated in under 2 seconds.
Now: 99% of pages are generated in under 2 seconds.

Before: the average load time was 2.9 seconds.
Now: the average load time is 0.31 seconds.

There have been brief hiccups during the upgrade in the past week and we are sorry about it. They were straightforward issues that have been dealt with rather quickly. Next we will move on to remove bugs introduced by the hardware upgrade.

Slowness and downtime

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 02:58:43 +0000

A lot of you have experienced speed issue and downtime these days. We apologize and would like to share what’s going on.

Our current systems is 4 year-old. To pave the way for coping with more users and exciting features in the pipeline, we have decided to update the system bit by bit.

Recently, we’ve been working on the hardware side of things which has turned out to be tricker than anticipated. We expect to roll out the new hardware one by one in the next couple days and the site shall run at a higher and much more reasonable speed. We’ll post updates here and on Twitter. Sorry for the wait!

aNobii for iPhone 3G

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:23:39 +0000

When we launched aNobii iPhone app two months ago, one of the most common comments was “nice … but can you make it work with my 3G?”

Everyone knows 3G lacks auto-focus thus making it difficult to do barcode scanning. Turns out it is not merely more difficult; it is an entirely different challenge. Kudos to the Occipital team who made this possible.

Happy scanning!

aNobii for iPhone 3G: http://itunes.apple.com/app/anobii-for-3g/id353101422?mt=8

aNobii for iPhone 3GS: http://itunes.apple.com/app/anobii/id327440393?mt=8

aNobii (the Book)

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce the launch of the book!

The wonderful journalist and blogger Barbara Sgarzi is the driving force behind this project. Here’s a short interview we’ve done with her about the book (in Italian):

aN: Un libro tratto dalle recensioni su aNobii. Da dove nasce l’idea?

Ba: L’idea è partita da una editor di Rizzoli - ovviamente un’aNobiana! Secondo il suo parere professionale, molte recensioni scritte su aNobii sono intelligenti e acute, utili e interessanti. Oltre che sincere, ovviamente. Mi ha contattata per chiedermi di pensare a un libro che ne contenesse alcune. Sono stata immediatamente conquistata dall’idea, così, all’inizio dell’estate 2009, abbiamo iniziato a lavorarci. Per rispettare le opinioni degli utenti di aNobii, abbiamo deciso di non scegliere le recensioni facendoci guidare dai nostri gusti e preferenze personali, ma di seguire alla lettera il rating di aNobii per selezionare sia i libri che le recensioni da pubblicare.

aN: Quanto tempo ci è voluto per realizzarlo?

Ba: Circa 4 mesi. Abbiamo iniziato a luglio prendendo i 100 libri più letti (in quel momento) su aNobii Italia; poi abbiamo selezionato le 5 recensioni più votate dagli utenti per ognuno di quei 100 libri. Il passo successivo è stato chiedere la liberatoria legale agli autori per pubblicare le recensioni. Ed è stato abbastanza complesso, perché erano molti. Se qualcuno rifiutava, passavamo alla recensione successiva in classifica. Il libro, che sfiora le 500 pagine, conta 600 recensioni e 333 autori!Poi siamo passati all’editing dei testi cercando per quanto possibile di mantenere lo stile originale degli autori. Su aNobii i lettori scrivono di libri nello stesso modo in cui ne parlerebbero tra amici e abbiamo cercato di mantenere quella freschezza. Alla fine di ottobre il testo era pronto e il 26 di novembre sarà in tutte le librerie.

aN: Ci è piaciuto molto il design e la grafica del libro, specialmente le illustrazioni. Chi le ha realizzate e perché?

Ba: Chiara Rapaccini è l’illustratrice. Ha fatto un lavoro eccezionale! In realtà le illustrazioni che vedete non sono state fatte per il libro, ma fanno parte di un lavoro più ampio da lei realizzato anni fa. Visto che volevamo per il libro un look un po’ “vintage”, classico e ironico allo stesso tempo, le abbiamo trovate perfette. Per lo stesso motivo abbiamo scelto anche la copertina rigida. Non volevamo che suonasse come l’ennesimo libretto “preso da internet”; volevamo che avesse la dignità di una vera guida per amanti della lettura.

aN: I proventi del libro andranno in beneficenza. A quale associazione?

Ba: Visto che gli autori hanno concesso i loro contributi gratuitamente, Rizzoli girerà tutti i proventi a Emergency, per il loro Centro Chirurgico di Emergenza a Kabul.

Inoltre, vorrei ringraziare la Biblioteca Sormani di Milano che collaborerà ospitandoci nella bellissima Sala Grechetto per la presentazione del libro, il 3 dicembre 2009. L’ingresso è libero, aspettiamo tutti gli amanti di aNobii e della lettura.

Siamo stati anche molto contenti che Luca Sofri abbia accettato di scrivere la prefazione. Oltre a essere un giornalista molto noto e avere uno dei blog più letti in Italia, è un profondo conoscitore dei nuovi media e un vero utente aNobii, anche tramite l’applicazione per iPhone. Per questo abbiamo pensato fosse davvero la persona giusta.

aN: Hai qualche momento interessante (o complesso!) da raccontarci a proposito del libro?

Ba: Decine! Gestire le liberatorie legali non è stato facile, ma volevamo essere certi che ognuno avesse concesso il permesso di stampare le recensioni. Poi, rivedere tutti i testi è stato complesso perché avevamo davvero poco tempo: volevamo che il libro uscisse prima di Natale perché siamo convinti sia una bella idea regalo. Abbiamo lavorato un po’ di notti, ma ne è valsa la pena. E molte delle recensioni sono così divertenti che lo abbiamo fatto con piacere.

Un’altra sfida è stata la lista “Bonus track”. Siccome i primi 100 libri sono soprattutto classici e bestseller, abbiamo deciso di aggiungere una “bonus track” selezionando una recensione in più dalle librerie di alcuni recensori, per dare spazio anche a titoli di nicchia. Così alla fine le recensioni sono 500 più 100. Comporre la lista di queste 100 recensioni aggiunte senza ripetere per due volte lo stesso recensore, lo stesso autore o lo stesso libro e offrendo un panorama più variegato possibile di titoli e generi è stato come terminare un enorme puzzle!

Poi, alla fine del libro, abbiamo creato modi diversi di leggerlo. Si può iniziare tradizionalmente dalla prima pagina fino alla fine, oppure seguire uno dei 9 percorsi di lettura che conducono attraverso i libri più amati, quelli stroncati più ferocemente, i finali più belli, le recensioni più sintetiche, le frasi fulminanti, l’elenco dei recensori e così via. Volevamo fosse un libro dedicato a lettori appassionati ma con cui si può anche giocare.

E quello che abbiamo amato di più è che su aNobii le persone non mentono. Le loro recensioni, i loro voti sono veri e appassionati. Non hanno paura di scrivere che un bestseller non è affatto bello come si legge su giornali e riviste. Sono liberi da considerazioni d marketing o commerciali, per cui dicono quello che pensano davvero, ed è una boccata d’aria fresca.

Un’ultima cosa divertente: siccome il progetto era complesso, vi hanno collaborato altre persone e alla fine abbiamo scoperto che erano quasi tutti aNobiani!

aN: Progetti per il prossimo libro?

Ba: Chissà? Intanto vediamo come sarà accolto questo. Se, come speriamo, avrà successo potrebbe diventare un “format”. Sarebbe bellissimo scriverne uno ogni anno per fotografare ciò che la gente sta leggendo in Italia in quel momento e cosa ne pensa. E’ quello che scrive anche Luca Sofri nella sua prefazione, ipotizzando che aNobii, il tarlo della lettura sia presto recensito su aNobii.com: “Chissà che non finisca dentro la prossima edizione di questo libro, questo libro”, conclude. Lo speriamo tutti.

About librarians’ tools

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:00:00 +0100

In the past week, we’ve heard from many librarians about the need to improve the librarian tools.

First of all, let us express our gratitude to all the librarians for making aNobii a nicer place for everyone. You guys rock. And judging from the number of emails we received from users voicing their support for the librarians, we are not the only ones who think so!

Let us explain why some useful librarian features are now lacking. The gist of it is that some features could result in sweeping data changes that are often hard to reverse. Properly opening these features requires an overhaul of the current librarian system.

When the requests were few, the need to add these features was little. But as many of you have pointed out, we’ve grown to the point where the lack of features posted a significant problem. It’s time for a change.

In the past few days, our team had been working hard to figure out the design of a new system that could address librarians’ needs. We now have a blueprint.

Next, we’ll build and release these changes on a weekly basis, starting this week. And we’ll surely keep you all posted on the progress.

Let us once again applaud to all the librarians. We heard you. Stay tuned!

Annoucing a rather special book

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:00:00 +0100

For the past 2 months, some of us been busy planning a secret project. We are now excited to announce that we are our partnering with Rcs to publish a book authored by aNobiians from Italy!

The idea is simple: top 1000 book reviews on the top 100 books.

In the coming weeks, our project leader Barbara Sgarzi (barbara.sgarzi@anobii.com) will begin to contact some of you to ask for permissions to include the reviews in the book. All profits will go to a charity to be announced later.

This little gem shall come out by the end this year. We’ll keep you all posted on the progress.