From the press release:

Kobo Introduces Reading Life from Kobo on Vimeo.

Kobo, a global eReading service where users can read on any device anywhere in the world, today announced the launch of Reading Life, an industry first social eReading experience. Readers can now track their personal reading history, check-in with characters and places inside books and earn achievements and awards for simply reading. Readers can also choose to share books, favorite passages, awards and more with their friends on Facebook. Kobo Reading Life is initially available on iPad, as a part of the latest iPad update in the iTunes store now.

“People who are making the switch to eReading and building their lifetime libraries want an innovative social experience to go with it,” said Mike Serbinis, Kobo CEO. “eReading is going social, local and real-time with Kobo Reading Life, allowing us to create a fun, engaging and meaningful experience for our users.”

Kobo Reading Life for iPad provides an unparalleled experience that enables users to engage in eReading in new ways, connect with friends, and earn awards just for reading:

Sharing Books and Passages: Users can tell their friends what they are reading or highlight favorite passages in books they are reading. This is a great way to get a book club started, or update your bookclub friends as you read.

Statistics: Users can track their reading life with interesting statistics, including how many books they’ve read, pages turned, how fast they read, and times of day they read. Statistics help users track their progress, earn awards, as well as discover and learn about their own reading styles and preferences.

Activity: An activity panel shows the timeline of a user’s reading life, highlighting important events and milestones. Users have an at-a-glance view of their reading life, including new books opened, read and finished, passages shared, awards earned and more.

Check-Ins: Another ground-breaking feature called Check-Ins, enables readers to check-in with characters and locations inside books, enabling them to mark important milestones and win awards. For example, readers reading Alice in Wonderland can check in with or meet Alice for the first time, or check-in to the Rabbit Hole and tell their friends on Facebook.

Awards and Rewards: Readers can unlock fun and surprising awards that celebrate achievements in their reading life. Awards like ‘The Papillion’ which is earned by the power social sharers, ‘The Twain’ earned by those that read daily, and ‘The Witching Hour’ for readers who read into the wee hours of the night – once an achievement has been earned the reader can than publish and share with friends on Facebook. Award winners can also be rewarded with special offers from Kobo or its partners, just by reading!

Personal Book Cover: As your personal Reading Life evolves Kobo creates and automatically updates your own personal book cover – a mosaic of your reading life that you can easily share with your friends on Facebook.

“This is truly a celebration of reading—not about individual books, but about a person’s entire reading life,” said Mike Serbinis, Kobo CEO. “This goes far beyond sharing titles, but sharing experiences in a fun and social way.” …

Kobo Reading Life is now available for download for free from www.kobo.com or the iTunes App Store. Customers who currently have Kobo on their iPad can download the update directly on their device.

3 COMMENTS

  1. The statistics are interesting, and the potential to earn actual rewards from reading is genius. My only two issues: I am not sure I want to share every single thing I read on Facebook (thankfully, that seems optional) and of course, you only get credit for books you read from their store with their app—so side-loaded books, or books you read on other devices won’t qualify. For me, the amount of actual reading I do on the iPad that isn’t a magazine is trivial, so I am not sure how many ‘rewards’ I can earn—and certainly whatever I do ‘achieve’ will not in any way be a true reflection of how much reading (from them, and otherwise) I actually do. Great concept, but definitely still a 1.0 iteration given the current tech.

  2. On first reading this looks like a pretty modest effort to socialise reading and the facebook thing strikes me as unexciting.
    The stats are the kind of thing techies behind the scene probably think are great but I doubt most readers would care much about. The rewards thing is very vague and hard to comment on. The facebook thing … I would have imagined that most readers are post facebook generations. Even as they grow up, will the facebook generation stay with it ? and do they really want to share their reading with their friends on fb ? Hmmm.
    I think that dedicated social networks that are starting to appear online, limited to the reading community only, are the way to go in this new world of socialising eReading.

  3. I think my issue is that for me, Facebook is the only place on-line where I use my full, real name so I am very protective of what I post there. I mean, my parents read Facebook. My boss reads it! So fine, my boss is not going to care if I read the new Stephen King or not, but what if I am reading Resumes for Dummies? Or something religious or political? Do I really want my boss or my parents or friends necessarily having that broadcast to them? I keep my Facebook activity ON Facebook—I don’t post to websites signed in with my Facebook id and don’t play Facebook games. So for me, the whole Facebook thing is a non-issue. I wonder if I am the only one who feels that way.

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.