lib.rario.us - Social Media Cataloging

lib.rario.us logo lib.rario.us is a social networking site focused on the media (CDs, DVDs, games, books) that you own or are interested in. Coincidentally TechCruch recently published an article about sites focused solely on cataloging books. The TechCruch article is mainly about Shelfari, butmentions others in the same space, although they fail to mention lib.rario.us. Social cataloging seems to be an up and coming niche.

lib.rario.us is the brainchild of M. Dave Auayan, who did all the original design, development and marketing. Recently his friend Jim Myhrberg has taken over primary coding duties. Like most of these projects Mr. Auayan started lib.rario.us to fill a personal need.

I started this project mostly because it was something my wife and I wanted, a site we can put up our media collection so friends and family can see what we have and what we like. I wanted to keep the data portable so that users would be able to use their info anywhere, not just lib.rario.us.

librarious screenshot lib.rario.us has a great feature which allows a user to export their catalog into an excel spreadsheet. The site also has custom RSS feeds for each user, so you can track your friends without having to constantly visit the site.

I think the biggest issue with social cataloging is getting the information to the site. The thought of entering all my CDs, DVDs and books is quite overwhelming. The lib.rario.us form is simple enough and it uses Amazon’s API to ease the process. Also by using Amazon’s data the site can normalize the entries making matches easier.

I think this is an area where one site could take a huge lead over the competition. One idea would be to use bar code scanners, such as the CueCat, to make adding items much faster. An even cooler implementation, and one that is probably more likely to gain wider acceptance, would be to use webcams as the bar scanner. Imagine just waving a DVD in front of the camera and having the site automatically add the item. Flash could be used as the interface, since it can access a users local webcam (I’m pretty sure). The image recognition piece would be fairly tricky, but if it was easy then everyone would be doing it.

lib.rario.us is written in PHP and uses MySQL. The site is currently going through a major re-write which will be built using a custom framework. The site had been live for one year now and has grown through word of mouth and social bookmarking sites, such del.icio.us.

Mr. Auayan is currently trying to figure out how to monetize the site so they can grow it even further. In my opinion this type of site doesn’t lend itself well to the free/premium model (there is a buzz word for this, but I can remember it at the moment. Freemium? Anyone know?). I think there is too much competition who aren’t charging, plus I struggled thinking up a feature set that could be part of a premium package.

The first thing I would do, and this would be pretty simple since the app is already tied into Amazon, would be to add unobtrusive “Want this CD/DVD/Book? Buy it at Amazon” referral links. I don’t think users would mind this at all. Upon further review I see they’re already doing this. I think the key is tying the ads into the catalog so that they’re actually relevant to what the user is looking at. So rather than just sticking up some Google ads, I would become an affiliate at TicketMaster and have concert links for whatever band made the CD.

Another idea for monetization, although this is somewhat controversial, would be selling anonymous data. The type of information being gathered would be useful to companies doing market/trend analysis. If you had a big enough user base I think you could package the data in a way that protects the individual user’s privacy, while still providing valuable information to market research firms.

I would like to extend my thanks to Mr. Auayan for sharing his project. He’s facing some tough competition, but as a friend of mine always notes: competition just means there is a market for the product. Keep an eye out for lib.rario.us in the next Tech Crunch social cataloging post

Popularity: 17% [?]

Matt
January 20th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

1) You should make sure to sanitize any user input and also trap your sql errors. I don’t want to go into too much detail because of the potential security risks.

2) When adding an item if there is not picture a gray box is shown. I can mouse over to find what the empty picture represents. I think you’d be better off putting the text information below every thumbnail and replacing the blank gray image with a generic “No Thumbnail” image.

3) Also in the add item page if I submit without actually selecting an item I get another form with a weird looking button (screenshot).

4) It would be nice if I could add stuff that isn’t on Amazon.

5) I think the two RSS icons (the orange and blue ones) are overkill. Pick one.

6) The main menu ([users] [media] [books] [dvds] [music] [games]) is a bit difficult to read with the striped background. Also the media option is a bit confusing at first. I would probably remove it or at least change it to “All” or “All Media”

7) I would like to see a search on the main page. The search also shouldn’t just do tags. You should be able to search by item as well. As a user I’m not going to put the title of the book/cd/dvd I’m adding as a tag.

Say I go to DVD in the main menu, then click on an item I get brought to a page for that item, for the user who added it. Then I have to click again for the “main discussion”. As a user I would want to go right to the main discussion.

9) You should spice up the home page using some of the dynamic content provided by the users. For example I would take the recent additions from the right and make that the first thing people see. That way you can use the item thumbnails to make the home page more lively. I would take the site description paragraph and cut it to a simple tag line that you could use in the header. Look at Flickr: “The best way to store, search, sort and share your photos.” Also the recent news section looks like ads.

10) You should probably enforce a minimum character length on usernames and passwords.

m. dave auayan
January 28th, 2007 at 11:15 am

I’ve recently added some “social networking” to the site. At the moment, you can add people as contacts and have only your contacts’ stuff in one area (also with an rss feed), so you won’t have to look in several different pages to see if they’ve added anything new.

I do have a flash based webcam scanner in the works. It currently scans fine, as long as you can get the barcode to close enough and in focus. I’m currently building a new workflow around that. This same workflow should work well with either the webcam scanner or a real barcode scanner, as well as make adding things manually even smoother.

As for your comments… lets see:

1) That’s taken care of…
2) The new optimized workflow will take care of this.
3) Fixed.
4) I will be looking for alternate sources in the future. Adding custom items (not found on amazon, or alternate sources), and/or customized covers was a couple features I was thinking would be good “premium” features.
5) I can fix that (as soon as i figure out which one works better).
6) Also, I keep making icons for above the navigation links, but I keep throwing them out. I’ll get it right some day
7) I’ll be working on adding a real search feature very soon.
Each item in the collection can be commented on, the first page from the main dvd menu you mentioned shows the comments, and the main discussion, shows only reviews by the owners. I could include a link directly to the main title’s discussion from the main menu.
9) That’s also something I’m planning on soon.
10) Done.