> This seems like a fun side project idea honestly - can I ask what’s most broken and which great features are missing?
It's basically just the momentum it has, alongside with crowdfunded book directory (you don't have to enter the metadata manually in like 99.999% of the cases). I'm not gonna say "don't bother", but I've personally used three Goodreads alternatives over the years and nobody mentioned a single one of them yet. I've settled on BookDigits[0], which is what Goodreads should be if you ask me.
> Yes, Amazon could shut it down but eh, might be worth the risk
Technically API isn't the only way users could extract their data from Goodreads. There's also export/import tool that exports data in CSV, and there's also RSS feed that you could ask for.
If there's one good thing I can say about Goodreads, it's that it's not a walled garden.
All your points are true - but I think using the API to essentially just create a “better front end” for Goodreads would be the the new idea here because of that momentum. You wouldn’t need to add your books or friends on this new app, you would just login with Goodreads and it would all be there. It could also two way sync so even if your friends want to keep using goodreads, any ratings you put on this new app would still show up on your goodreads profile.
The reason “better frontend” is in quotes is because it wouldn’t stop at just making the UI/UX better, but also do better search using Algolia, a better book recommendation engine, etc. but there’s no reason it couldn’t just use the goodreads api as essentially the backend for user profiles and ratings
Obooquity and Calibre can both be made to do some of this via LazyLibrarian. It’s giving you a nice local library rather than recommendations, but it’s pulling the wanted/read info from Goodreads into LazyLibrarian. It is a good tool for curating a library but is also pretty clearly aimed at pirating ebooks.
It's basically just the momentum it has, alongside with crowdfunded book directory (you don't have to enter the metadata manually in like 99.999% of the cases). I'm not gonna say "don't bother", but I've personally used three Goodreads alternatives over the years and nobody mentioned a single one of them yet. I've settled on BookDigits[0], which is what Goodreads should be if you ask me.
> Yes, Amazon could shut it down but eh, might be worth the risk
Technically API isn't the only way users could extract their data from Goodreads. There's also export/import tool that exports data in CSV, and there's also RSS feed that you could ask for.
If there's one good thing I can say about Goodreads, it's that it's not a walled garden.
[0] https://bookdigits.com/