I arrived at booklikes after seeing it mentioned on goodreads.

I liked the reviews on goodreads but as a social network it was a little short on the social side.

When I got here I liked that I had a blog option as well as a review what you've read option.

But i found (still find) the site a little difficult to navigate. I get the impression that there are lots of folks out there and lots of discussions but there doesn't seem to be any way to search for people with overlapping interests.

I'd like to be able to find blogs by people who read the same kinds of things I do plus a few things that I wouldn't normally read. I'd also like to read blogs that give me some more information about what's going on in the book world.

It would help me if those of you who know booklikes well could point me at a booklikes basics page where I could find out how to search.

Any suggestions?

Hi, ABJunkie. The rest of us are trying to figure that out as well. For starters, if you hit the green Dashboard button in the upper left hand corner of your feed, you get a drop-down box. Explore takes you to other blogs, but currently that function has a few problems which we've all been talking about in the last couple of weeks (if you're interested in that discussion, you can check out the sub-discussion Think Thank in this group). Anyway, BL is working on Explore right now and will probably be making an announcement eventually which will take it in a direction which should be more satisfactory.

In the same Pull-down, there is a choice of Discussions, and there are several groups going on, some more active than others. I know there is one for horror, for classics, for time travel, among others.

One of the easiest ways I've found is to find someone you like and see who they follow. On their blog page, just hit the icon for Followers. Or whatever they may have changed the designation to.

Hope you like it here. Have fun and good luck.

The FAQ page (http://booklikes.com/faq) has info on how to use some things you might not be familiar with.

Some possibilities for finding people to follow with similar interests (Sorry if I overexplain, not sure what your BookLikes knowledge level is):

- Try searching tags in the box on the upper right (it'll default to books, so you'll need to click on the "Tags" button at the top of the search results). Maybe stuff like "book news" or "publishing news," if you're trying to find people to follow who post about what's going on in the book world.

- Make a list of some of your favorite books and see who's reviewed them. The problem there is that those reviewers may no longer be active, so you have to do a lot of clicking and searching.

- Check out the genres you're interested in on the Catalog page (http://booklikes.com/catalog). Each genre page has a "Recently reviewed on BookLikes" section that might point you to reviewers who read what you do.

- Haunt the Explore page, particularly the "New and Trending" section. I did that a lot when I first signed up. If I stumbled across someone who'd read and reviewed something that looked good, I considered following them.

- If you found a person you'd potentially like to follow, there's a little button on the top right of everybody's blog page that looks like a graph. Click on that, and it compares your shelves to theirs and tells you how similar you two are.

That's all I can think of right now. It looks like BL is working on revamping their Explore page, so hopefully it will be easier to connect with people who have similar interests, but those changes may take a while to happen.

Well, you've come to the right group ...! :)

There are currently three threads here introducing individual bloggers:

* Active Reviewer Bloggers
* Active Author Bloggers
* Shout-Out for "Newbies" and Underfollowed (But Active) Blogs

I'm sure you'll find several bloggers there that you're interested in following.

Also, at the beginning of the "Think Tank" Thread, there are some posts with tips that some of us have found helpful in finding new blogs. Quote:

"- Check out the "Hot Reviews" and "New and trending" sections on the Explore page. Those are good places to find active bloggers.

- Add books to your shelves. I don't know about others, but one of the first things I do when I'm considering whether to follow someone who's followed me or who has commented on/liked one of my posts is to check what they've read and how they've rated it.

- Comment on posts. Don't be shy. :)"

"To find people to follow: Pick a book you adore (preferably a kind of obscure one) and go look at the blogs of people who reviewed it. If they read stuff you like and post stuff you want to read, follow them."

"Commenting on posts is how I've found most of the people I follow.

One of the first things I look at when I'm considering whether or not to follow someone is their shelves.

Empty shelves will almost always make me click off and be on my way, without following.

If the shelves are stocked, I will poke about to see if I agree with the blogger's ratings, or I will see if they have read or are reading books that I'm interested in-if they are. I'm followin'. :)"

"I also look under apps then under reading lists to see what people have put together. sometimes the ones that put together these lists have some great shelves to get ideas from."

"Commenting on posts is also how I've found most of the people I follow, because when other people comment, I get a notification, & can stalk their blogs and figure out if they post with any reliability."

"It might be that seeing what and who our friends like and follow in real time in the newsfeed (like Facebook and Goodreads) might boost us to follow too. "

(For me personally, a combination of the above methods has worked best.)

Unfortunately, there is no single "BookLikes for Beginners" page -- which was kind of the impetus for the creation of this group, actually.

Hope this helps!

Also, the more people you follow, the more robust & interesting your feed will be! There are a lot of reviews, but there are also a lot of bloggers who post about stuff going on in the book world, book hauls, book memes, etc.

Reply to post #5 (show post):
Yes -- reblogging is sort of a hot-button issue. Many of us are opposed to seeing their reviews (or other posts with personal / proprietary content) reblogged. Generally, if you *do* want to reblog, it's considered polite to ask first if the reblog is OK (unless it's simply a funny meme or something similarly innocuous).

A while ago, Monlight Reader put together a "Reblog-tiquette" (http://moonlightreader.booklikes.com/post/571500/reblog-tiquette) -- if you *are* thinking about reblogging something, it's worth to bear her suggestions in mind as well.

The community here is what I've found most rewarding. I started by reading and commenting on blog posts of people who are active and with whom I have shelved books in common. Like you, I do a lot of my "reading" by audio, and I found many blogs by checking the audio-related tags and categories. I found other interesting people and their blogs in reading the other comments and conversations on those blog posts. And then found new people by interacting with all the commenters in their blog posts. And so on. Though I began by looking only for people with whom I have common interests, I now know many people here with a great diversity in tastes and backgrounds, and I feel my experience here is much richer for it. As Themis-Athena said, don't be shy!

Hi, I am a newbie and any tips or help would be greatly appreciated. I would love to follow you and hope that you will follow me. Thank you!