As the end of the year approaches, end-of-year review articles also approach. One of these comes from Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb, looking back at how online reading has changed over 2011.

MacManus identifies two key trends—reading has become a lot more social, thanks to article-sharing apps and sites like Facebook, and new tablets and apps have brought e-reading to more people. He writes that e-reading has become a lot more mobile (citing the improved system of notifications that came to iOS) and easier to discuss across a variety of platforms.

Looking at the apps and other examples he cites, I can see what he means. We’ve always liked talking about what we read, watch, and otherwise experience, because they can represent shared experiences that we can use to build relationships with other people. (“Do you remember ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?”) It makes sense that ways to make that easier would come about, and people would take advantage of them.

Of course, all that socialness has mostly been confined to articles, blog posts, and other easily-sharable short chunks of media. E-books have by and large remained untouched beyond a few experiments (and I suppose the ability to share quotes from Kindle books would count, too). It will be interesting to see how and if e-books are changed by social networking in the future.

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