BookFinder.com Journal: BookFinder.com goes global
BookFinder.com goes global
I’m pleased as punch to introduce some exciting new changes at BookFinder.com:
JustBooks
We just launched JustBooks.co.uk and JustBooks.de, two new book search engines based on BookFinder.com’s technology, designed for British and German users. We’ve always had a global focus; every month, we help book lovers from 240 nations and territories search in four languages, and connect to over 100,000 booksellers spread out over 50+ countries. But we’re taking a different approach with the launch of our new JustBooks network of local search engines; instead of concentrating on big numbers, we’re focusing deeply on local book search markets, working to offer better coverage and improved search algorithms. Our new sites are still in beta; we’ve been doing a lot of our own research, but I’d really appreciate hearing from British and German users about what we can do offer a better way to find and buy books.
A growing team
BookFinder.com is brought to you by a very small team of geeky bibliophiles. For the past nine years, we’ve made do with only two full-timers: Charlie and myself. I launched the site back in 1997, based on a project I built for class at UC Berkeley. Charlie assembled our first server (an old 486 computer built from parts), and joined the project full-time in 1999. We recently grew by 50%, with the addition of our friend Giovanni, a trilingual European business student and bibliophile, the son of a small town librarian, and the co-developer of an early European college book swap site. Giovanni’s helping us ease our workload, while continuing to pursue new projects like our JustBooks sites. He’s also based out of Germany, making us fully compliant with my favorite new buzzword, “micro-multinational.” (And true to form, we’ve been negotiating the 9-hour time difference between California and Germany with email, IM, wikis, and Skype.) Giovanni’s going to be blogging in German for JustBooks.de.
Languages, locales
In our tests, we found that users didn’t always grok the way we split up our site into separate language search subsites (e.g. www.bookfinder.com/french/ to find books in French, www.bookfinder.com/german/ for German, etc.) We’ve gotten rid of the separate subsites, and replaced them with a single pulldown directly on the search form. The next time you’re looking for Isaac Asimov books in French, results are just a click away.
On the other hand, we’re also now letting users view the website interface (menus, forms, headers, etc.) in the language of their choice. We currently support American English, British English, and German. The easiest way to change settings is on our preferences page. (Using BookFinder.com in German is downright strange, like walking into the wrong apartment, and realizing that the furniture’s laid out differently. Definitely recommended if you have free time.)
As always, we appreciate feedback.
