Since May I have been commuting on BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. One thing that struck me is the readership on BART. I am surprised by the number of people who read and by the titles. As you might have noticed I started posting the titles I see from my Blackberry, mostly as a note to self.
But this is a great opportunity for two entities, BART and Borders.
As the ridership increases, the trains become more crowded and delays proliferate BART will need a way to engage its riders. Would it not be great if BART created a website of book lists of books seen on BART? As a low tech, low cost effort it could be a simple digg like page to which people add books or add their count to existing books. If they want to get fancy, they could install bar code scanners in key stations, people just swipe their books and presto it will get added to the book list web page.
Borders which is facing store closings and suffering losses just canceled its deal with amazon.com for its web offering and started doing its own web channel. It would benefit from in two ways if it did this project for BART hosted the lists at its expense. The PR on this project , and the sales from adding a "Buy Now" button next each book listing. In fact Borders can then make this generic and let anyone create public book lists, they stand to benefit from the Long Tail.
If these two choose to do it, I would make one additional recommendation: make the site public with no login requirement. The latter would simply kill it.
But this is a great opportunity for two entities, BART and Borders.
As the ridership increases, the trains become more crowded and delays proliferate BART will need a way to engage its riders. Would it not be great if BART created a website of book lists of books seen on BART? As a low tech, low cost effort it could be a simple digg like page to which people add books or add their count to existing books. If they want to get fancy, they could install bar code scanners in key stations, people just swipe their books and presto it will get added to the book list web page.
Borders which is facing store closings and suffering losses just canceled its deal with amazon.com for its web offering and started doing its own web channel. It would benefit from in two ways if it did this project for BART hosted the lists at its expense. The PR on this project , and the sales from adding a "Buy Now" button next each book listing. In fact Borders can then make this generic and let anyone create public book lists, they stand to benefit from the Long Tail.
If these two choose to do it, I would make one additional recommendation: make the site public with no login requirement. The latter would simply kill it.
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