Goals

• Facilitate peer-to-peer borrowing and lending of books
• Allow groups to create spaces of social book sharing
• Allow social groups to visualize their shared library
• Always be as small as possible

Borrow and Lend

• Users can request to borrow a book
• Users can approve the request (and then loan the book to someone)
• Users can nudge users to return a book
• Users can transfer a book to someone

Social Features

• Users can connect to other users
• Users need to be able to moderate who follows them (approve / deny / block)
• Users can create and join groups
• See connected users' reviews of books
• Create a discussion thread under each book, visible to all members of a specific group
• Allow users to tag books with recommendations
• Import from goodreads?

What it isn't

• A comprehensive and public network
• No stars, likes, or dislikes

What it needs

• Canonical data source (Goodreads API? Google Books?)

In 1.0, users can only connect to other users. Books exist as global references, and “who owns what” is visible to each user. Only borrow and lend functions are available.

In 2.0 users can have person-person connections and can join groups. Groups are always invite only, and must be created by a user. Under each book, the user has access to group discussions. If a user is in multiple groups, they’ll see options to switch between group threads. (If a user leaves a group they created, they must elect a new admin.)