Online book reader + social network BookGlutton is launching its public beta today. I got to take a behind-the-scenes look at the service a few months back, in specific regards to its newly developed feature, the Unbound Reader. This newer feature is a very central part of what BookGlutton does, because it allows users to actually read the books online, and socialize from there. With marking and commenting tools, users have the option of reading (and marking up) a book alone, or with friends. This helps BookGlutton stand apart from other social book sites that let you post your library and wishlist, and subsequently discuss books you've read.
The best situation to liken this to would probably be web-based tools for listening to mp3s versus an iPod--what has more value? The crowd split on this one is pretty evident--early adopters and mainstream users, that know of Amazon and see the Kindle on mainstream media reports. Given Amazon's recent approach to the capabilities of social networking, however, BookGlutton may still need to stay on its toes.
As a college student (depending on the class), I was very adamant about getting as many books online as I could. One class in particular was a Fantasy English class. We read one book per week, and they were titles like Alice in Wonderland, Metamorphasis, and Like Water for Chocolate. I got about half my books for free online, but at the time there were no collaborative tools, or self-marking tools for actually garnering value from the books for my personal use in terms of schoolwork (unless I head over to the computer lab and spent the better half of my afternoon dominating the printers).
So I can certainly see the value in a tool like BookGlutton, even if some professors might feel like such tools are making us all dumber. From the looks of it, book releases in French and Spanish, along with the personal upload tool for sharing your own content look to be newer features included in this public beta release.