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Introducing Goodreads for Facebook Timeline
Enable Goodreads for Timeline
British playwright Alan Bennett once said, "A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot." At Goodreads, we completely agree. That's why we're excited to announce a new Goodreads app for Facebook Timeline.
Timeline—Facebook's redesigned profile—lets you easily track all of the things that are important to you across time. Goodreads members already share more than 12 million books a month with each other, and now with the Goodreads app for Timeline it's easy to share your books with all your Facebook friends, some of whom may not be Goodreads members—yet!
For book lovers, your Facebook Timeline is incomplete without sharing what you're reading. If you connect your Facebook account to Goodreads, you can share the books you're currently reading, as well as your new reviews, progress updates, and quotes, on your Timeline. It's a great way to share the books you love with everyone—regardless of whether you got the book from your library or you read it on your ereader.
Goodreads for Facebook Timeline displays your progress through the books you read.
The Facebook News Feed and Ticker create serendipity—such as showing you when two of your friends were reading the same article or listening to the same band. Now, with Goodreads for Timeline, you'll learn when two friends are reading the same book at the same time. Who knows, maybe you'll end up starting a new book club.
We also know how important it is to keep track of your reading. Facebook Timeline will help with this by creating interesting statistics on what you've read. The Goodreads summary will show which authors you've read the most each month and year, and also give you a roundup of your monthly books and pages read!
Timeline provides a summary of your monthly reading activity.
Starting today, you can add the books you're reading to your Timeline. In the future, you may be able to go back in time to add all the books from your Goodreads shelves that you've already read, so you can display your favorite books from all the important moments in your life. That would have made Louis L'Amour very happy: "Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."
Adding Goodreads to your Timeline will give you a yearly report on the books and authors you love.
To add Goodreads to your Timeline click on this button:
Enable Goodreads for Timeline
You can also add Timeline from the apps tab in the "my account" section.
Here at Goodreads, we want to help people read more and discover great books, and we're happy to offer yet another way to do this with Goodreads for Facebook Timeline. As Chad Harbach wrote in his recent bestseller The Art of Fielding, "So much of one's life was spent reading; it made sense not to do it alone."
British playwright Alan Bennett once said, "A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot." At Goodreads, we completely agree. That's why we're excited to announce a new Goodreads app for Facebook Timeline.
Timeline—Facebook's redesigned profile—lets you easily track all of the things that are important to you across time. Goodreads members already share more than 12 million books a month with each other, and now with the Goodreads app for Timeline it's easy to share your books with all your Facebook friends, some of whom may not be Goodreads members—yet!
For book lovers, your Facebook Timeline is incomplete without sharing what you're reading. If you connect your Facebook account to Goodreads, you can share the books you're currently reading, as well as your new reviews, progress updates, and quotes, on your Timeline. It's a great way to share the books you love with everyone—regardless of whether you got the book from your library or you read it on your ereader.
Goodreads for Facebook Timeline displays your progress through the books you read.
The Facebook News Feed and Ticker create serendipity—such as showing you when two of your friends were reading the same article or listening to the same band. Now, with Goodreads for Timeline, you'll learn when two friends are reading the same book at the same time. Who knows, maybe you'll end up starting a new book club.
We also know how important it is to keep track of your reading. Facebook Timeline will help with this by creating interesting statistics on what you've read. The Goodreads summary will show which authors you've read the most each month and year, and also give you a roundup of your monthly books and pages read!
Timeline provides a summary of your monthly reading activity.
Starting today, you can add the books you're reading to your Timeline. In the future, you may be able to go back in time to add all the books from your Goodreads shelves that you've already read, so you can display your favorite books from all the important moments in your life. That would have made Louis L'Amour very happy: "Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."
Adding Goodreads to your Timeline will give you a yearly report on the books and authors you love.
To add Goodreads to your Timeline click on this button:
You can also add Timeline from the apps tab in the "my account" section.
Here at Goodreads, we want to help people read more and discover great books, and we're happy to offer yet another way to do this with Goodreads for Facebook Timeline. As Chad Harbach wrote in his recent bestseller The Art of Fielding, "So much of one's life was spent reading; it made sense not to do it alone."
Comments Showing 201-250 of 437 (437 new)
I dont want to use the facebook timeline but still want to post my books to my profile. why is that enabled now and only available for the timeline??
Leo wrote: "Matt wrote: "You're assuming since one app works well, every other app should also work well."That's a valid assumption if all the apps are using the FB Open Graph API. I don't know about Rockmel..."
What a wonderful post Leo!
I don't like this. I want to remove it, but no matter how many times I remove it, it keeps showing up. I've disconnected my FB account at goodreads and removed the app from facebook. I've cleared my cookies and logged out and back in. How do I make this thing go away?
Finally got it to go away, I hope. Unfortunately this will not work for me. I'll do my updates by hand. They won't look as pretty, but they will look how *I* want them to look. I don't think there's anything gained by being rude and condescending, but clearly this app is not ready for prime time. I'll keep an eye on it and when functionality makes sense, I'll add it back.
Farewell to Goodreads updates on FB.
Just moved a book from "to read" to 'reading'...it is showing up on my timeline in my GR box. However..when I click to go the the GR app page (with the timeline of just my GR activity)...it's not showing there. Latest thing showing on the app page is from last week.Also..my recent addition isn't showing in my Activity Log on FB. (UPDATE - ooops...i take that back. I do see it in the Activity Log...but it was posted at 3am this morning?!...even tho I just updated)
just an FYI/troubleshooting...
I accidentally enabled Timeline and now am totally frustrated with attempting to remove it. Is there a simply instruction to do this? I want the choice to post my reviews on Facebook!
Shaun wrote: "I accidentally enabled Timeline and now am totally frustrated with attempting to remove it. Is there a simply instruction to do this? I want the choice to post my reviews on Facebook!"You're stuck with it, once activated you can't go back. I prefer it but I'm sure you will get used to it.
On posting reviews: When I complete a book, move it to the "read" shelf, edit the review to add a rating and write a review, my activity log shows "Chris rated A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing on Goodreads." and the rating shows on my Timeline but the TEXT of my review does not show.How do I get the text of my review to show up? Everything else works fine.
Sad to see these new changes. I haven't enabled the timeline feature so now I apparently have no ability to post my reviews and rating to my recent activity or as a status update?
Rick wrote: "Sad to see these new changes. I haven't enabled the timeline feature so now I apparently have no ability to post my reviews and rating to my recent activity or as a status update?"I suppose I could just paste the url of my reviews, but it was a lot easier with the push of a button before..
Well i am very sad I no longer am able to have updates on my facebook very disapointing!
This will be linked better with the update that FaceBook is introducing. Go to FaceBook and search "Timeline".
Is there a 30 step guide to getting the app to work? the 16 step guide sure is not working. Updates still refuse to appear on facebook. I think the goodreads team is fundamentally confused about app development. Please stop thinking this is a problem with facebook and read carefully message 223 and message 219 by Leo and Nikki. The very fact that a 16 step guide has been posted on a site for something so simple as sharing should shock the tech-team. If nothing else, give a fb and twitter share button below every update that appears in our own update feed on goodreads, we will manually share until you guys figure out why the app has crashed so badly.
The very fact that a 16 step guide has been posted on a site for something so simple as sharing should shock the tech-team."Try putting up the 16 step guide on the home screen or mailing to all users and see the magic of user count reducing by half exponentially. that is how damaging this sort of complexity is in todays world for a website
Oh my goodness, people, it is not this dire. Timeline is coming to FB whether you've activated it or not. Soon EVERYONE will have it. Goodreads is just trying to make an app that will work with it.Activate it or don't, but is it really worth all this angst? I turned mine on, I'm kicking back, and as they get it mor and ore set up we'll see the changes. The end.
Wendy F wrote: "Oh my goodness, people, it is not this dire. Timeline is coming to FB whether you've activated it or not. Soon EVERYONE will have it. Goodreads is just trying to make an app that will work with ..."It is not angst buddy, it is called constructive criticism. Tech companies can improve best if the users help them in sorting out bugs.
I am active on this thread purely because I want goodreads to sort it out before most of my friends get harassed enough by the new app to get out of goodreads. As an old member, I might be inclined to stay put longer but new members will come, see that it is buggy and hop out.
As for timeline in facebook, I love it and have been using it from the roll out phase as an amateur app-developer. The problem is not with the facebook app protocols, goodreads has got it wrong with their app and really shouldn't be taking this long to give it publishing permissions.
I'm really against this change. I liked being able to choose which reviews went on facebook. I hate the timeline feature anyway, and now it seems like with goodreads that is my only option. I dislike the fact that you took away our option of posting each individual review to fb, with the freedom to choose.
Like Riku, i would really like to go back to the way it was. if not, maybe its time for me to find another site instead of goodreads.
Wait- this means I can't post a review of my book to my Newsfeed? That SUCKS. I love doing that. The whole point is to show my friends what I am reading. No one will see it if its just on timeline. Why did you change it? It's awful!!
Matt wrote: "Ok, folks. I thought I would go back to square one and start everything over from scratch to see if I could come up with a nice "how-to" for getting your Goodreads updates posting to your Facebook ..."Thank you - I did all of this, but GR still not coming up as an option in my favs on FB, so must be an issue with them, as the Pinterest one did and is working fine. Will just be patient and wai now :)
Why can't goodreads app ask for both these permissions?1) Post to Facebook as me
RockMelt may post status messages, notes, photos, and videos on my behalf.
2) Add app activity to my timeline
RockMelt may publish my app activity to my timeline.
Then goodreads will be able to give us all the functionality and flexibility that it used to give us earlier.
Plus, goodreads will also be able to give us its own app timeline and the really cool graphic shown in the blog post.
I have looked into it and it is really easy to develop an app that does both. if your engineers can't do it, I'll send you screen shots of the app i developed just now that does both and it took me less than half an hour!
In conclusion, please modify the app so that it can have two permissions;
1) Post to my wall 2) Add app activity to timeline.
Why restrict goodreads app to only publishing app activity? The users can turn either one of these off if they want but the app should provide both options.
Please do this fast.
I did all the steps I could but I get no pop up. When I hold down shift and click the blue box all I get is another window popping up with my profile on it. I give up.
Kara, I am not getting any response from your support team and this really should be an half hour job... Just update the app to ask for both permissions. I don't get it... what is stymying you guys? Why so much delay in such a basic thing?
SO amazing we can now connect our Facebook account to Goodreads, and share the books we're currently reading, as well as new reviews, progress updates, and quotes, on our Timeline. Good job! :-)Mia Loveless
Just like Goodreads,I also completely agree on Alan Bennett once said, "A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot." :-)Mia Loveless
Please respond here or to the mail to support... Any progress? no update is getting pushed in spite of elaborate steps and trials.. What to do?Please give an update on this.
I can get this app to post on my Timeline, but it doesn't post the picture of the book I'm reading. The space where a picture should be is just oddly blank.
With the previous GR>FB app, when I added a book, or updated a book's progress, or finished a book and wrote a review it would push the Update to the FB Newsfeed. This was very important to me as it would facilitate discussion with many of my FB friends over the books we were reading.Now, with the new Timeline, updates ARE showing on my Timeline, but nothing is showing on the Newsfeed. My updates are not showing to friends, and their updates are not showing to me (I have asked them this and it is confirmed that no GR updates are ever showing on the FB Newsfeeds any longer).
This is quite ridiculous. The main purpose of linking GR to FB is so that my Friends can see what I am reading and I can see what my friends are reading. Almost everyone uses the FB Newsfeed - we don't jump around and visit each other's individual profile pages.
The fact that GR updates are no longer shown in the FB Newsfeed makes the app totally useless.
At least give us the option (when adding, editing, updating etc) to SHARE our updates to FB. Sharing still works for everyone else, why not for GR?
Goodreads seems to have stopped posting to my Facebook (even the activity log doesn't show anything). This may be because I am updating via the phone app - I initially had success using the website.
Ok, I followed the 16 step plan. Yes, I got it working. ... I think. But, it appears that I'll have to go in and tell it each story that I want to see should be on my timeline. Now I'm going to go bug Facebook and see if they can help me.
Well, Goodreads and Facebook are talking to each other now, but still not completely. Every time I start a new book or rate something, it shows on the Timeline. Hooray!What is not showing, on the Timeline or the Activity Log are the "making progress in" updates when I update to a new page or percentage read.
Is there any reason why the started reading and reviewed updates would show on Facebook but the "making progress in" ones are not? I have the "updating reading status" option checked under the Goodreads app section in my profile.
Things looked a little different to me this morning. It looks like they may have made some of the changes about posting each story that we have been talking about... I'm not sure, but maybe. Because my activity log has extra stuff in it that wasn't there yesterday.
Great idea but I think I'll be waiting for the bugs to be ironed out (please do). I like having the separate timeline for Goodreads but it hasn't updated anything since I first added the option. I can add items to my general timeline though and the book in the preview rectangle updates. Just not the bit I really wanted working.
I'm upset. I hit that GRs to Facebook timeline before I understood it & it initiated my having a timeline profile which I can't undo. That shouldn't have happened. I should have gotten a message that said yo don't have Timeline...???
Yup. Repeated experiments have confirmed that in any given book, the 'made progress' update is pushed to facebook only once. Is that intentional?
What if there is something worth sharing/discussing at multiple points in the book?
Is the little box on timeline supposed to look like that first image? Because I *still* don't have a picture of the book, and it doesn't give a little summary with my % complete. Just a couple of generic lines stating that I started the book and made progress with it. Why even show us these pictures if this isn't how the app actually works/looks in use? It's misleading.
Hey guys, when I like a quote, I am still able to share it directly to facebook and even feature it on my timeline there...if the app is capable of doing this wonderful pre-timeline thing, why not give that capability for book updates and reviews too? Surely, surely?
Here are some of my experiences with the new GR FB app:- Marking a book as "to-read", then changing it to "currently reading", then to "read" does not update the number of "Marked As To Read" in FB.
- After clicking on "I'm finished" on the GR home page, the book shows up in FB GR recent activity as ".. have finished reading". After clicking on the Save button, it may or may not disappear from FB.
- Editing the Start Date causes the ".. have finished reading" entry in FB to disappear.
- In my FB GR Activity Log, two separate sections appear: one marked as "Today", the other is marked as "January 24" (the date where I am at right now: Malaysia). The system time on GR seems to still be on January 23, the date that appears when I click on the I'm finished link.
Is it possible that most of the problems plaguing the FB GR app are caused by incorrect timestamps?
Michael wrote: "I have everything set up pretty nicely, it shows what I'm reading, progress I make, what I've read and what I've rated as well as most read authors. What it's not showing is the total number of boo..."If you update a book multiple times, does it show up on fb? COuld you please check that out?
Michael wrote: "Riku wrote: "Michael wrote: "I have everything set up pretty nicely, it shows what I'm reading, progress I make, what I've read and what I've rated as well as most read authors. What it's not showi..."yup.. then maybe it is a problem only with me.. if i update a book once, then no more status updates from the book including the finished message are pushed to fb.
Thanks. It could be a timestamp issue as Josh pointed out.. maybe you have to be in the same time zone as goodreads.
Michael wrote: Do you mean like this? Yes. How do you make it do that please? Mine still won't show up like that.
Riku wrote: then maybe it is a problem only with me.. if i update a book once, then no more status updates from the book including the finished message are pushed to fb.
Nope, not just you. I followed the 16 steps and I'm still having issues.
Michael wrote: "Riku wrote: "Michael wrote: "Riku wrote: "Michael wrote: "I have everything set up pretty nicely, it shows what I'm reading, progress I make, what I've read and what I've rated as well as most read..."Nope it doesn't show on activity log also. Goodreads can easily give their app permission to publish ti timeline as well as access app timeline. i don't know why they refuse to do that. Then we wouldn't have to go and add from activity log every time... it'll show up in our timeline as well as the app timeline and in friend's newsfeed.. simple.
Yes, I was asking about a permanent way to do it. I know how to do it each time. *Le Sigh* Hopefully, someone will find this one and fix it. Or show us how to fix it if the fix is already possible.
Cascata wrote: "Yes, I was asking about a permanent way to do it. I know how to do it each time. *Le Sigh* Hopefully, someone will find this one and fix it. Or show us how to fix it if the fix is already possible."the fix is to give app the permission to publish to your timeline instead of only to the app timeline
From my tests previously, I discovered that sometimes when I change the start date of the books I read to the day I finish reading it, it will appear on FB but sometimes it will not. So I went and read up a little on building Facebook OpenGraph apps and then did a quick check on the data that is passed to Facebook when we mark a book has having finished reading, etc.As a matter of fact, the timestamp is the cause of at least some of the errors. When a book is marked as read, the data that is sent to Facebook contains "the timestamp of the instant is marked as read" as the "end date" and "the timestamp of the book's date started reading" as the "start date". The timestamps are converted to PST so timezones aren't likely to be the problem here.
What comes up though when I check the responses that Facebook returns is this error message:
FB.ApiServer._callbacks.f292552be({"error":{"type":"Exception","message":"The action you are trying to publish is invalid because the 'start_time' you provided of '1327219200' is more than '86400' seconds in the past."}});
1327219200 is a UNIX timestamp indicating 22 Jan 2012 08:00:00
86400 seconds = 24 hours
The "end date" that was posted to Facebook with this request is 24 Jan 2012 04:24:37.
A quick search on Google turned up this bug report: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/...
So the current workaround is to keep the start dates and end dates within 24 hours of each other.
There are probably other issues stemming from Facebook's code that causes other problems, but I hope this helps the devs on GR! I'll be glad to lend a hand in testing/debugging.
Michael wrote: "Riku wrote: "Cascata wrote: "Yes, I was asking about a permanent way to do it. I know how to do it each time. *Le Sigh* Hopefully, someone will find this one and fix it. Or show us how to fix it if..."only the goodreads team can do that... for some reason they dont want us to be able to do that i guess.. maybe they feel their users dont have the discrimination to not spam fb with book updates..
No book cover image, doesn't include the starred rating? I think this is a step backwards. I much preferred the old look.
The iPhone app still doesn't work. If I post from the website things show up on Facebook though. Goodreads needs to fix the app! Vincent wrote: "Goodreads seems to have stopped posting to my Facebook (even the activity log doesn't show anything). This may be because I am updating via the phone app - I initially had success using the website."
what should be done to push a "is finished with" update to facebook instead of a "rated a book" update?
That's a valid assumption if all the apps are using the FB Open Graph API. I don't know about Rockmel..."
I have got the app working on my FB Timeline, but for the life of me I couldn't get it to show on my Newsfeed. I have tried a few other Open Graph apps as well and got the same problem (shows on Timeline but not on Newsfeed)
I tried logging into one of my fake Facebook accounts and found my updates on those newsfeeds (Mark made progress on Gooodreads, then the picture and name of the book and then On 428 of 1050 pages). Plus another book I rated.
These updates to my friends Newsfeed appeared without any action from me, so the default 'allowed on timeline' does post to friends newsfeeds where as manually clicking 'Shown on timeline' does make each update more prominent on your timeline it does not post those stories to anyone's Newsfeed.
The annoying thing about this is it is not longer obvious these items are in our friends newsfeeds as they don't show in our own, it seems a little devious on Facebooks part, I could be postings hundreds of things from various apps that I think is only showing on my Timeline only to be unwittingly bombarding friends with pointless bits of info.
I have only tested two apps so far, so will have to see it keeps happening.