Readum links Google Books and Facebook

"Why should we divide our friends and fellow readers up by the devices they use?” the BookGlutton.com founder asked in this article in Publishers Weekly. The Readum platform builds a connection betweeen Google Books and Facebook. Readum allows readers to make comments on specific paragraphs in their Google Books. Those comments are then posted to Facebook groups or their Facebook wall. The app also creates an individual page for the comments and pulls any book listed into their Facebook profile.

While not yet as far along as other social media experiments for books environments (like Copia) the tool has the same idea at its base -- enabling communities of conversation around digital books. One aspect of the Readum approach that I like is that they are actively working to demonstrate the "proof of concept" by utilizing existing social networks rather than trying to build their own. That enables a more coherent strategy and focused development around competencies. It will be interesting to watch where this project goes.

A short video on Readum appears below:

Readum from Travis Alber on Vimeo.