With the recent proliferation of eReaders, it must be worth asking the question: is the future of eBooks and eReading social? After all, these devices are connected to the web, where our online social networks are.
It seems to make sense that the next step would be to share thoughts and examples of what is being read. I already share many thoughts on social networks about what I’m reading at any given time. I’m sure many people do.
As a beginning, it may be worth noting that Amazon already displays such things as the ‘Most Highlighted Passages of All Time’ and ‘Heavily Highlighted Recently’, from the new social highlighting feature of kindle books.
In terms of social eReading, here are a few other possibilities, as recently suggested by Kevin Rose. And let’s face it, most of these will probably happen soon enough in one form or another:
- Friend annotations – highlighting paragraphs and leaving voice annotations for friends. (As I said above, Amazon has already implemented part of this).
- Lend a book to a friend by hitting a button and choosing a friend to lend to.
- Seeing how far friends are into the same book you are reading.
- Virtual book clubs – seeing who out of your Facebook and Twitter friends is reading the same book, so you can discuss it with them.
I don’t know about you but virtual book clubs seem to make a lot of sense to me, considering how popular they have been offline over the years. It seems like these would work pretty well online, in connection with eBooks. This is even something smaller, independent book sellers could start, or host, as a way to help compete with the big online retailers.
Academic Joshua Tucker has also pointed out some of the benefits and possible pitfalls of social eReading. On discovering the Amazon social highlighting feature by surprise, what disturbed him was that he could not find a way to opt out of sharing his own highlights.
The issue of privacy is one that may disturb some people, and will not bother others at all. As Tucker points out, now Amazon knows what books you have downloaded, they know which passages of the book you find interesting and can make recommendations on what you might be interested in buying based on them.
Tucker mentions that he found the collection of highlights at the end of the book most troubling as a professor, as the temptation for students may be to just read the social highlights and not read the whole book.
Another interesting issue to me, is that book authors may soon have the opportunity for feedback from readers, as blog authors do. As Tucker says, the possibility may exist for authors to see which parts of the book people are highlighting, and even to be able to answer questions from readers.
Do you like the idea of eReading becoming more social, or would some of these features be too much of a distraction? Do you think the privacy concerns are a serious issue, or overblown?
