Kevin Rose Video On eBooks Asks For More Social Features

Digg founder Kevin Rose has a new video about eBooks up on YouTube. Rose, a long time eBook reader, wishes eBooks could be more social. They are Internet connected after all, he points out.

In the video, Rose gives his top five wish list for eBooks.

1. The ability to pull up character information about different characters as you are reading. Rose demos what a stats page could look like, a little character card that shows facts about the character and then some information about where he’s at on that particular point in the story.

2. Friend annotations. For example, you could read a book that a friend has already read and click to see which passages they have highlighted.

3. The ability to lend a book like you can with print. So you can take a book from your iBook library and send it to a friend. They would get a message, and approve it. Then it would show up in their digital bookshelf. Rose would even like to be able to check their friend’s status within the book.

4. A stats page and rich media. For Rose, a stats page would let you can see how much more of the book you have to read and how long it might take based on your reading habits. Rich media would include video or Wikipedia articles about things or places mentioned in a story.

5. A virtual book club that lets club members check their friends’ reading status and receive an automatic email when everyone is done, signaling that its time to meet.

I think Rose has some great ideas here. I love the character stats bar, it reminds me of a character page at the beginning of a play, but you don’t have to flip back and forth to see it. Also, I support rich media. As I’ve pointed out before, it would be great to watch clips from a Peter Bogdanovich’s film while reading Larry McMurtry.

I also love the ability to share books and check out what my friends have found interesting. Though I don’t know that I would need to spy on their reading status. I think that people can read at their own pace and that can stay private. But on the social note, I’d also like to see friend recommendations. I use this on Netflix all the time and would love it when shopping for books.

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