Website purpose: (Taken from FAQ) "Youpine is a tool for sharing sentiments about books and movies to create consensus." The site only allows book titles if they are available on iBooks. The site also allows reviews of Movies, if they are listed on TMDb.
4 Stars
Easy to use to post "reviews" using descriptive words
Website Review: I was asked by the owners of Youpine.com to review their website. So, that's what I have done. The first thing I did was create an account, which was pretty easy. I set mine up using the traditional username and password, but those who have a Facebook or Twitter account, can use those accounts to create an account on Youpine.com. The site may want to add the ability to log in using Google Plus. The site is pretty simplistic, but I think that helps with the usability of the site. I like the idea of the site, and instead of using traditionally written reviews, it uses what they refer to as sentiments. I don't think sentiments are a new idea or concept, but it's one of those things that helps the review writer when they want that perfect adjective. I've read through the FAQ page, prior to adding any sentiments. I went through the list of authors that I've reviewed for this year, and found some, so I've entered my "sentiments" on this. I think I will add this site to my list of book review sites. The features on this site were easy to use, and it's all about descriptions of the books, not written reviews. As a book reviewer who writes in full sentences, it'll take a little getting used to in order to add just descriptive words, but I think it works. I don't know if it is a downfall, but I think that maybe being attached to other databases for books (such as Goodreads) would be beneficial, not just to the authors and their books, but to the site itself. I would also be helpful if when searching by author, and the author appears, that you can click on the author's name to get only their work.