Dawid Piaskowski

We’ve received many questions about BookLikes mobile app and the answer to this request is always the same: Yes, of course, there will be a mobile app. Definitely. Since the question is still present in BookLikes community I’ve decided to present you several challenges we’re dealing with and what we’re working on right now to resolve your doubts and to assure you that it’s something really worth waiting for.

BookLikes is an unusual company, our development isn’t just based on my and my team’s concept, it is an ongoing process which is also based on BookLikes’ members requests and suggestions. We’re not only creating BookLikes for book lover but with book lovers, with all of you guys. Knowing your opinion is something extremely valuable for me and for the BookLikes team, it has showed us many new paths and introduced great solutions that we’ve implemented. You feedback, options and requests have also guided us in what direction we should be developing in the near future.

The notion near future is crucial here, our regular members know that we release a new feature -- a new functionality available for all BookLikes members every week -- on Thursdays. Those special Thursdays became our traditions and we definitely don’t want to give up on them, however, the weekly releases have a big impact on the process of development and maintenance of the mobile app.

What we care about the most is the quality and the functionality. Those two characteristics are our guidelines for building BookLikes and cannot be ignored when we refer to BookLikes mobile app. The thing is, we still have many awesome ideas to show, numerous exciting releases to launch -- I’m talking about unique, innovative and special releases, not seen on any other book-social sites -- but if we decide to introduce a mobile app now, at this very stage, it would mean we should stop or at best limit the Thursday releases.

For us the most important question isn’t Will BookLikes introduce the mobile app? (the answer is Yes) but rather What BookLikes mobile apps will include? The process of preparing apps for various systems (Android, Windows, IOS) is a necessity as well as including all BookLikes functionalities and this results in major changes for BookLikes.

With an active mobile app we won’t be able to launch new feature every Thursday and update the app on the weekly bases as it requires extra time and resources which we cannot spare at this very moment. We would have to freeze the process of BookLikes development in order to adjust all BookLikes functions to the mobile application because the maintenance of the functional, high quality app with weekly updates would be extremely difficult. This would result in holding back the development of new options and improvements on BookLikes, and in consequence this would also mean introducing the incomplete and not fully functional app. It’s definitely not something we want to set up.

The app should be like a gift with an exciting inside and a breathtaking wrapping. Both of these elements need to be complete in order to present a full package of options to make BookLikes mobile experience total, fun and enjoyable.

We’re super excited about the features we want to introduce during the upcoming Thursdays and I think you’ll be also thrilled about the things we’ve prepared. For this reason I was looking for the best solution for BookLikes that would allow us to develop BookLikes, launch new weekly releases and present the mobile friendly design, and I figured out that the best solution would be a responsive design.

This way, we’ll be able to give you the Thursday candies and provide a webpage perfectly adjusted to your mobile devices. The implementation of the responsive design won’t happen overnight but it will be executed much faster than an app, plus nor the BookLikes team, nor you - the BookLikes members - will have to resign from our weekly surprises and new options for BookLikes community. And they are really worth a wait.

The BookLikes mobile app will be of course introduced, and we promise that it will be much more than just a blogging/book-cataloguing app. Just wait and see :-)