The mobile app is horrible. It's a webview or something, and works like total crap on old devices. If you open a notification for a group discussion post, it tells you what the title of the discussion is--but not what group it's for.

As much as possible, I find myself interacting with Goodreads through calibre plugins; I've got a library with zero actual book files that contains an entry for every book in my library, and I mainly use that to browse my collection. Since syncing that list takes so long, my actual calibre libraries are also synced to Goodreads, as that's where I actually make my changes.

With Library thing's recent removal of library limits, I'm thinking more and more about abandoning Goodreads--except I don't know if there's a calibre plugin for PT, and I've spent so much time adding and updating book records for items in my goodreads library, which would have to be redone for LT.

FYI the mobile opera browser uses the webview and is superfast, but the Kindle app is all native code.

Kindle and Goodreads I think are both crap for the same reason: the goal is to kill the competition not make great products.

Amazon should never have been allowed to buy Goodreads.

The barrier to entry for an alternative to Goodreads isn’t exactly high. But does anyone care enough to do so?

The barrier is actually quite high. Sure, its easy to make a CRUD app that would aggregate ratings. The difficult part is to get people to use it instead of the leader. These are called network effects, and they are very hard to break.

This is why big social media sites have such high valuations. Any small group could develop an alternative to Facebook. However, the chances of that usurping them is almost zero. The same goes for Goodreads.

The barrier was not high. Now that it’s baked into Kindle (automatic sync, instant review, etc), Goodreads has a significant moat.