Be Social Enough for The Social Media

Goodreads (a social networking site based on consumption of books) demands the social networker to work, but in this process of "work" or socializing we may limit our own discoveries.
Upon creating my own Goodreads account I went through steps to create a profile, and it surpasses than the basic username, password, and name type steps we are accustomed to. Beyond these steps, I was taken back to books I had read years ago and some more recently and asked to rate them 1-5 stars, and also to decide on what genres that I have most interest in. From this process Goodreads becomes able to filter out which books they believe we would not enjoy and can also make recommendations based on what we have read or desire to read. The more books rated and posted the more Goodreads is able to facilitate specific interests. So in other words we actually have to be social on Goodreads to get anything out of it; a passive attitude will not benefit our reading lists. Just as it is said in Lisa Nakamura's article "Words with Friends": Socially Networked Reading on Goodreads, "Goodreads turns the reader into a worker, a content producer, and in this it extends the labor of reading and networking into the crowd." So yes, what you may have thought was leisurely rating and reviewing books is actually work.

The Goodreads slogan is "reading is more fun when shared." On Goodreads we have friends with whom we share books we have read, books we are currently reading, and books we want to read. We also have the option to rate and review books which made me a little uneasy at first. I was somewhat unfamiliar with sharing books on such a platform as Goodreads. I stressed that could not see the reaction of my friends, and I was scared that I could not defend my own judgement of why I read a certain book or gave it that specific rating. I had only experienced sharing books by word of mouth that had worked until I created my Goodreads account. What was running through my nervous head initially is described perfectly in Nakamura's article, "Goodreads shelves remediate earlier reading cultures where books were displayed in the home as signs of taste and status." I was to be judged off the books I had read, but I would not be there to back myself up? It scared me honestly; however, those fears have been quieted by participating and sharing my books. In response to sharing books we uncover millions of potential books, and to me that is worth the risk. 

Another concern with Goodreads is that does it help us to become more creative or destruct our own personal identity? When sharing books on Goodreads we can become connected with users who hold similar interest to us; there is even an option to compare books and ratings with other users before adding them as a friend. By becoming friends through this function we may just limit our own sphere of books, but this is not a easy function in real life. For example, last weekend I went on a road trip with friends of a friend( near strangers), and one of the girls in the car was reading an auto-biography. I haven't read too many auto-biographies in the past and I neglected to put them on my Goodreads account, but after talking with her for a few hours I became interested in the book and downloaded the sample on my kindle. (I've since rented the book.) I made a connection socially I probably would have never made on Goodreads. I do not want to completely discredit Goodreads, for I have made connections there I would have never made in person. Simply we just need to be open to sharing on all platforms to form our true personal identity.