It could be kind of lame to poke fun at a site that I don't use (anymore), but I find this funny enough to share: Goodreads has started changing and updating their site last year, but apparently they've broken a ton of things in the process, and now they've published an announcement with the list of 12 bugs they're (supposedly) trying to deal with.
In short, literally the most essential functions aren't working. In the iOS app some people can't shelve books. On Android people can't see all reviews. On desktop the search and sorting are completely random, the default editions that represent each book are also apparently random, though it seems the selection favours the editions in any language other than English, preferably also in a non-Latin script. The database is borderline impossible to navigate.
So if you search for Harry Potter, the first result is Random Harry Potter Facts You Probably Don't Know: 154 Fun Facts and Secret Trivia. If you open the page of William Shakespeare, the first books that are presented to you are Romeo and Juliet in English, Hamlet in Italian, and Macbeth in Arabic. And after a while instead of showing his actual plays, the site just lists weird collected editions such as Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet; Othello; An Index (The Works of Shakespear, Vol. 8) by some scammy publisher that prints PDFs from Google Books.
I've spent enough time on GR to see how it's held together by duct tape and inertia, and now it really seems to be crashing down. Still, kudos to the admins who are keeping up with the recent trends in technology, such as actively ruining your website, as also seen on reddit and Twitter. In fact I'd say GR has better chances of actually dying (i.e. having a massive user drain) than the other two sites.
Is there anyone here who's still active on GR? Not trying to judge, but I really have to ask -what's making you stay there? Are the alternatives too lacking in book data/users?
The story behind this is that Goodreads is actually owned by Amazon. They acquired it a long time ago hoping to use it as a way to drive book sales. The tl;dr is that it didn't work, Goodreads never made money, and over the past 2-3 years Amazon has slashed its budget.
The site is now run by a skeleton crew that aren't enough people to even keep the basics running. Amazon is happy to watch it wither and die, its cheaper than shutting it down.
TBH it felt that way ever since I registered there, much more than 2-3 years ago. It's been largely stagnating for over a decade with regards to design and functionality. It's impressive if they somehow managed to reduce their budget even more and employ even fewer people. Which makes the recent half-baked redesign and similar interventions even weirder, they clearly don't have the capabilities to do them properly...
Was it meant to, though? I assume Amazon planned it to work (dunno if it really did) as a platform to advertise the books sold on Amazon.
@antonim @reversebananimals I'm honestly not sure how Amazon thought GR was gonna make them money? I mean, if I wanna buy a Kindle book/book from Amazon, I never go to Goodreads. I just go there to look up series and books by authors and then just use my libraries to get the books. I knew even back then GR would **never** make Amazon money.