Writer's Grove

Happy Apps

I have long wished for social platforms that encouraged people to be social rather than, you know…antisocial.  And I think maybe we have a couple of winners to share with y’all: Litsy and Imzy. It’s the y on the end that makes them so spiffy.

Both are in limited release right now & working hard at expanding. I hope they’ll make it and stick around. Let’s take one at a time.

IMZY

This is in beta but it’s not terribly hard to get in. You already know a guy: Me. I have two different “communities” through which you can request an invitation—pick one! Fineapple Writers is intended to be a general interest collection of authors and readers, though at this point it’s mostly sf/f folks. All are welcome though! I also have my own page, Writer’s Grove, named the same as this blog, and which functions like a FB page in that people can follow it and comment on your posts but cannot post there themselves. Once you’re in, explore. Have fun. No obligation to stick around my haunts! Here’s why I dig it:

1. Think of it as a cross between Reddit and Twitter, but without all the trolls. The way it’s built discourages them to begin with, and it’s easy to banish the inevitable few who are determined to violate Wheaton’s Law. HOW IS THIS MAGIC POSSIBLE? (a) You join communities grouped by interest (Doggies! Books & Writing! Armored Cepahalopods!) or form your own. In the formation process, you have the ability to disallow anonymous comments. (b) If you do not allow anonymous comments, people must comment using a name. And they may only have one name in that community forever. Which means if they get banned from that community, they can’t simply create a new identity and continue to pester you/everyone. (c) It’s not Imzy who bans people; it’s Community Leaders, who set the rules for that community. People don’t have to wait for an unresponsive megacorporation to act. Trolls who roll up with their racism or misogyny or whatever can be shown the door.
2. No ads. Imzy is funded in the short term by some investors, but their revenue model will be based on taking a slice of transactions conducted on their site. You can, at present, “tip” people, though I don’t have that feature enabled on my two communities because buying a book is quite frankly tip enough. Eventually you’ll be able to sell stuff there. But hey: NO ADS.
3. They have the ability to include podcasts in your posts. Whoa.
4. I turned off comments a long time ago on this blog. Constant fight with spammers & such. On FB the comments have been a mess for a long time—you have to constantly switch to Most Recent to see new stuff.  Imzy gives you a little green highlight next to new comments so you can catch up quickly if you’re returning to a conversation. And you know what? I’m enjoying the comments on Imzy so far. They’re longer and thoughtful and cool and I didn’t know comments could be like this and then I remembered, oh yeah. No trolls. Hee!
5. They’re actively seeking feedback from beta users and implementing changes.
6. For authors, I think there are benefits. You set up a personal community like a FB page (without ads or suggestions that you BOOST!) and post there, then link those posts to other platforms. And you can also post and/or comment in larger communities on Imzy. You get to serve current readers and have a way to reach new ones. But best of all? No algorithms smooshing your posts like tricksy FB. If someone is following you, then by golly, your stuff shows up in their feed, not just some of the time. And if they’re following other communities you post in, same thing: They’re going to see your post and maybe decide to try your book someday. So author homies—please give it a try, see what you think? Those of you who are more into tech would probably have excellent suggestions to forward to their programmers.
7. For readers and writers working on that first novel or whatever, I also think there are benefits. Discussions can actually happen here. I’m seeing lively prompt communities and beta reading and geeky word-of-the-day stuff and so on.
8. This is just beta. It’s going to keep getting better.

LITSY

This app is not in beta but is limited at present to iOS, a free download in the App Store. They are working on Android and Desktop versions.

Think of Litsy as Instagram for books—not just #bookstagram, but seriously for book geeks. Compared to Instagram, I love that I’m going to see a ton of fantastic books in my feed and…yeah, that’s it.

To post on Litsy, you first have to pick a book to associate with it. That always goes right up at the top so people can check it out, read the promo copy if they want, and maybe add it to their “Stack,” which is essentially a TBR file.  (I love this idea because now I have a list of books I wanna snag every time I go to the bookstore/library, all handy on my phone. I can show the picture to a librarian or spiffy bookseller and not have to remember how to spell the author’s name.)

Next you pick whether you want this post to be a Blurb, Quote, or Review. Each of these give you the option for a picture. And dang, the pictures are often turbo cool. If you get in on this, do  yourself a favor and follow BookBento. They stage beautiful bento-style photos like this (all of these are screenshots from my phone):

Cool, right? A blurb, by the way, in Litsy terms, is most anything—like you getting excited about a book you haven’t read yet but you’re about to, with hot chocolate and a blanket and a puppy. Or whatever! It’s a feature I love. So many other sites/apps want a review and that’s it. But Litsy allows you to be excited about any part of reading. Want to do a quote? Well, do it how you wish. Make a photo in an app like WordSwag featuring the quote you like. Or, as below, take a photo of a page and then comment on it. Notice that quotes are color-coded navy blue while the blurbs are red, but each gives you the book link at the top.

Then, of course, you may do reviews. Those are color-coded green. I’ve been doing quick Bookshelf Reviews of books I loved and will re-read. But they’re going to be new to somebody! Here’s my review for UPROOTED. You can see at the bottom where people have the option to like, comment, add the book you reviewed to their stack, or share your post. Yep, you can share your stuff to Twitter and Ello and Tumblr (so far).

Apart from what I’ve already said, I really enjoy the fact that there’s no self-promo here. Litsy does one thing really well: It lets book geeks share their love for reading. I love sharing what I’m reading and taking fun little pictures, and I love seeing what other people are reading and I’m getting some fantastic suggestions. So yeah. Check it out & have some bookish fun with your iPhone (and I’m easily found as KevinHearne on there if you want to follow).

There you have it, folks. Imzy and Litsy. They’re my new happy places on the Internet.