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February 13, 2023

#139 - (A Bit) More Social!

Prioritising Community features (for those that want it!), a new user sign-up milestone, and the upcoming streak feature!

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#139 | 13 February 2023

A bit more social...


Apart from when we added friends and buddy reads, social/community features have rarely been the priority at StoryGraph, and that's been an intentional decision. (The linked issue, #34, is from January 2020!)

However, we've now grown to the point where the lack of ways to connect with other readers and build community within the app is becoming the main source of friction for some.
Screenshot showing the StoryGraph's community feed. There are a few updates of people finishing and reviewing books. The top right section of all of the news feed updates read "less than a minute ago".
People want to find their friends more easily and be able to interact with them in a wider variety of ways!

And so we've decided to have "Community" be a focus for 2023, releasing a bunch of features that make it easier and quicker to find people you already know, whether online or IRL, and connect with new reading buddies, creating a livelier, richer, and more interactive experience on StoryGraph.

Only if you want that though!

A core part of our identity is being a private, peaceful, safe space first and foremost, with all social features being opt-in, and we have no plans to stray away from that. 😌
 

Since last time...
 

We reached another user sign-up milestone! 🎉
Screenshot of text reading "Number of Users: 1,500,000".
January was a big month for us in general with 85.4 million pageviews across 5.7 million unique visitors! 🤩

Product development in the last couple of weeks has mainly been focused on ironing out little bugs and adding some extra polish to wrap up the redesign and Dark Mode work.
Screenshot of an Up Next Queue in StoryGraph in the desktop view. There are two book panes visible. In the right-hand column of the two panes there are up and down arrows. There's also an icon bottom right, which when hovered over reveals that it's the drag-and-drop icon.
One of the things we've improved is the Up Next Queue "move" and "drag-and-drop" functionality!

Next two weeks


Hopefully our streak feature is out, or close to being out, by the next issue as we've been telling everyone they're getting it this month! 😅 😂
 

What I'm reading


I asked our Instagram followers which of my audiobooks (gifted to me via Libro.fm's ALC Program) I should listen to next and they voted for Julia Whelan's Thank You for Listening. I'm really enjoying it so far!
Screenshot of the mobile book pane for Julia Whelan's "Thank You For Listening". The square, pink book cover is to the left, and to the right is text about the book. Underneath the title and author reads: "11 hours, 15 minutes. First pub 2022". Then the book has the tags: fiction, contemporary, romance, emotional, lighthearted, medium-paced, audio, libro-alc. Underneath the tags is a green button with white text reading 37%. Then there's a dropdown which is toggled to "currently reading" and above the dropdown is text reading "Started Feb 12, 2023".

Have a great week,

Nadia

P.S. Know somebody who's an avid reader or would enjoy following along with this journey? Please do forward this email to them! Thank you. :-)
 
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