Topical items and views on the impact of digitisation on publishing and its content and the issues that make the news. This blog follows the report 'Brave New World', (http://www.ewidgetsonline.com/vcil/bravenewworld.html ), published by the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland and authored by Martyn Daniels. The views and comments expressed are those of the author.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Questia's Social Network
As social network sites go its hard to judge Questia’s new Research Wizard. In principle it make sense to link researchers into a community application that enables them to share thoughts but is it enough and is Questia the right centre? It has aligned the Research Wizard with Facebook which obviously adds an attraction to many and provides potential new subscribers.
Questia is a major online library, with over 67,000 full-text books, 1.5 million articles, and an entire reference set complete with a dictionary, encyclopaedia, and thesaurus. It provides materials in some 14 major disciplines and its new social site has further fragmented these into what they claim are 6,000 plus research categories.
Looking at the initial dialogue it appears far from a research site and more of a touch point with some weird and wonderful research subjects which will obviously appeal to the earnest researcher but is maybe too granular in its construct.
On first reaction the principle looks good but unless the traffic occurs across the many categories many may not find the experience sticky enough and a good idea may be lost through its execution.
Labels:
questia,
research wizard,
social networks,
social research
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3 comments:
Questia Sucks
Questia is a company that should have died with the .com bubble. They have a broken business model and their failure to acquire funding for future growth proves this. This company will be squashed by google in all due time. Save your money and look elsewhere.
They have terrible billing practices too.
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