Penguin to launch social network for bookworms

LONDON - Here’s good news for teen bookworms and aspiring authors. Penguin Digital is planning a social network for them where they can communicate and interact about their shared pastime.

Penguin will transform Spinebreakers, a content website developed three years ago, into a social networking site within the next six months.

Spinebreakers lacks tools that allow its users to communicate and interact about their shared pastime. Instead it is a site where teenagers write about books and authors.

“I set up the site as I felt there were fewer and fewer places talking about books in a way which appealed to teenagers, ” The Telegraph quoted Anna Rafferty, managing director of Penguin, as saying.

“However, I knew in order for the site to work, it would have to be written and edited by teenagers - which is why we have over 100 deputy editors aged between 14 and 18 looking after the site, and many more contributors of a similar age,” she added.

“However, they cannot use the site to communicate, which is why I want to transform the site into the first social network dedicated to books within the next six months,” Rafferty said.

She said the site, which attracts 10 to 15,000 unique users each month and is still in beta, was not a commercial venture for Penguin, but was hugely important to the company for “future-proofing the book industry”.

Rafferty also admitted that the company had not “shouted enough” about Spinebreakers since its launch and would do once it was re-launched.

“There are too many distractions out there for teenagers which pushes reading down the list of hobbies. Even other social networks are a major distraction for teens, which is why I hope giving reading its own social network, which is written and edited by teenagers, will help keep reading relevant in the digital age,” she said. (ANI)