Goodreads hits 10M book-loving members

The Yelp for readers has seen tremendous growth since launching its recommendation engine last year

I happen to love to read. All of my friends that know this about me do what friends are expected to do, they tell me about the books the I HAVE TO READ next. And usually these are very well thought out and relevant suggestions. The big problem, however, is that I can never remember these books when it comes time to start a new adventure. It doesn't matter if they email me these suggestions or I try to keep little notes on my smartphone. These well thought out offerings are lost in the ether forever. That was until I signed up for Goodreads about two years ago. 

Goodreads is like a social community for the literary nerd out there. The service lets you discover books, save them on to-read lists, share recommendations with friends, rate past reads and so much more. As soon as I really started using this site I had a place to easily save the book I heard about on The Daily Show or the new novel that my friend swore would be right up my alley. And it looks like more than me and 47 of my friends have discovered the value of this site, since the company just released that it hit the 10 million member mark.

This means the company has doubled its registered user base less than a year and a half -- since in May 2011, the company said it had five million members.

Founded in 2006, the San Francisco company has only raised close to $3 million and is continuing to make great connections and partnerships with the likes of Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Investors in the company have included True Ventures and John Hering.

Considering the fact that I have rated 119 books and have 409 books on my to-read shelf, I am happy that others are finding a value in this service. The site also makes it super easy to find books and order them on the spot.

Since this is a book-centric community of people (and your friends) there is a large focus on recommendations and reading reviews on books. In fact, Goodreads’ book recommendation engine seems to be a large component of its growth. When it launched the new recommendation search engine in September after acquiring Discovereads.com, the growth saw a huge spike and steady increase.

You can think of this as a Yelp for books, with a very devoted group of reviewers to look through.

Goodreads says that it has catalogued 360 million books, with 22 million added on the site per month. The site also averages around 140 million monthly pageviews and has 22 million monthly unique visitors monthly.

The San Francisco-based company also recently moved into a new 6,000 square foot office in the city and has plan to continue its growth.

Seeing this milestone hit by Goodreads also reminded me that I am a bit behind on my 2012 book reading challenge -- where I gave myself the lofty goal of reading 50 books this year and I am only up to 10. I guess I better get cracking and some of you out there can feel free to suggest books that I need to get on my to-read shelf pronto.