Google SpacesGoogle has just announced “Spaces, a tool for small group sharing,” on the Official Google Blog – and practically the first usage example it mentions is book clubs. “Sharing things typically involves hopping between apps to copy and paste links. Group conversations often don’t stay on topic, and things get lost in endless threads that you can’t easily get back to when you need them,” says Google. “We wanted to build a better group sharing experience, so we made a new app called Spaces that lets people get people together instantly to share around any topic. With Spaces, it’s simple to find and share articles, videos and images without leaving the app, since Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome come built in.”

I’m not yet sure how much of an advance Spaces will be on Facebook groups – or on the Circles that Google built in to G+. Or whether it can rival the book discussions taking place on Goodreads – or even integrate with them. But in any case, it shouldn’t take too long to find out, since Google tells that “Spaces is rolling out today on Android, iOS, desktop, and mobile web for all Gmail accounts.”

And Google’s illustration for an example Space is “Comic Book Buddies.” Clearly sharing ebook files or book recommendations is just what Google expects to happen. We’ll see. But I’ll be interested to hear how well people find Google Spaces fits their book-sharing needs. Feedback welcomed.

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