Goodreads offers its authors a feature called a "fan" that readers can click on for any author. I've seen it on my author page and wondered just what it is and what it does. My reading the Goodreads FAQ page explains that becoming a fan allows you to follow that author's reviews, blog posts, etc. by reading them in your Goodreads feed. I write a lot of content on Goodreads including this blog and frequent reviews of all the books I read.
The difference between a fan and a friend is the author doesn't have to approve a friend. The other thing I discovered is the fan feature was introduced later into Goodreads, so the big name authors may have lower than expected numbers of fans.
If you want to fan me, I think you just click on the "FAN" button at this link.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...