Douban: Discover And Share Books Movies and Music

Douban has been a hot buzzword in China’s blogoshpere and in web2.0 startups. It is my favorite web2.0 site in China, now it can speak English. Douban has just launched its English version, in beta, of course.

Douban is a web2.0 startup founded by Bo Yang to help you to tag, share, rate, review and discover books, movies and musics. So far, only books and musics are available in English douban, but based on its Chinese version, movies will be added soon, I think.

What is Douban all about? (from its website)

If only there’s a way to know tastes of millions of people, and point out the ones most like yourself. The power of words-of-mouth would be amplified many times over. Douban was created out of this very wish. It does not target to any particular group of people. No matter how bizarre or commonly the things you like, Douban helps to you find the people who shares these interests, and discover more good stuff through them.

What you can do in Douban?

In Douban, you can tag, rate and review your books, movies and music albums, then Douban will recommend stuffs to you based on others user’s tastes. Judging by users’ review on the recommendation, you can discover your interested stuffs and add them in your wishlist. The more stuffs you added in your collection, the better the recommendation by Douban.

Besides that, Douban also discover other users who share similar interests with you, you can add them as contacts, send messages(doumail) to them, create or join groups for free discussion on any topics. Imaging what you can do in Flickr, you can do it in Douban, only it is on books, movies and music rather than on photos.

There is some similar sites as Douban, such as allconsuming, reader2, but I’m sure Douban is the best among them. You should try it!

Why it is called Douban?

“Douban” is the name of a Hutong (Ally) in Beijing Bo lived at when he cranked up the earliest code for this site. It is the chinese word for “peapot”, except it means one individual pea in a pot, and broad bean instead of pea.

Some Data on Douban

• Douban’s alpha version in Chinese launched on March 6, 2005;
• Over 60,000 registrations from Chinese speakers;
• Over a million collections and ratings;
• Over 13,000 full-length reviews.

Update: Douban’s English site domain name changed.

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