If you love reading and love sharing book recommendations with your friends online, chances are you’ve heard about – and probably used – the site Goodreads. Goodreads lets you keep track of what you’ve read and what your friends are reading. After being independently operated since it began in 2007, Goodreads was recently bought by Amazon, a partnership good for authors and book lovers – especially Kindle users. Both services have helped authors get their books out to a wider audience, and Goodreads has pledged to make Kindle support one of its top priorities. But Goodreads users are up in arms not only for fear that they’ll lose the sense of community they’ve built but because they’ve become the product, and they were just sold to Amazon. When you’re on a site and you can’t figure out what the product is, the product is you. As we see more and more every day, we’re all just data and ways for companies to make more money. We better get used to it.
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with AI strategy, implementation and governance, as well as technology, media and marketing. Named one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices in Technology, he is a bestselling author, covers tech and business for Fox 5’s Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN, and writes the popular daily business blog Think About This. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.