A project of Garage48 out of Estonia, Quotista is the result of a “boot-camp style initiative” which went from initial concept to delivery in a single weekend. This is a great way to start up a website as it focuses on delivery rather than endlessly planning a site which never gets born into fruition.
Log in is through Facebook Connect only, and I think this was a good decision because the site does have tight integration and allows you to share your selected quotes and books primarily through Facebook but also on the site itself.
Adding A Quote
Adding a quote is easy. Type in (or paste) the quote from the book that you would like to share. After typing in the name of the book the site will look for that title on Amazon and pull in the cover and other information to attach it to your book quote.
If you should choose to, you can also share your quote on your Facebook profile page. Any comments on your quotes are added via Facebook Connect – the site has very tight Facebook integration and is built on that connectivity.
What’s Good
What I like about this site is that it isn’t just a “Book sharing” website – there are plenty of those, LivingSocial Visual Bookshelf and LibraryThing being two great examples that let you catalog and share books. The thing that sets Quotista apart is that you share by quoting, effectively sharing not just that you “like” the book but why you think it is a good read with an example taken from the pages of the book.
Could Use Improvement
The site is still in beta and there are definitely some areas that could use improvement. One of them is that it would be great to be able to “tag” your quote, making retrieval easier than digging through a list of book quotes. I also think the text that is posted to Facebook could be a bit “cleaner” with the Quotista branding taken out. Twitter integration is notably missing – adding this as a venue to share quotes to would also be very popular with users.
Finally the typical Most popular and Newest quotes are available for viewing on the site. You can also Follow other users on the site, so that their quotes will show up on your homepage when you log in.
These round out the features and give users a base of content to discover and share with friends (should they so please).
Conclusion
The overall goal of the site is to both share books and to discover new ones. Quotista is a simple way to do this – they do not overload you with features which are the bane of many other sites. The design is aesthetically pleasing as well and is nice on the eyes. If anyone is a heavy reader and would like to share books and/or quotes with friends, Quotista would be my go to site. Feel free to follow me on Quotista and share any book quotes you enjoy!
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