[werrett]

Jabber/Xmpp? Is that a joke? Not to be rude, but surely the ‘club’ bit is the key part of a ‘book club.’

Most companies with more than a handful of people have, or would be interested in having, a book clubs. In tech forward shops they are more than likely using Slack.

I could imagine targeting some chat apps for a non-work audience, but the age of people having listservs and using email for multi-person back and forth is long gone.

[aboardRat4]

Well, I would like to keep my thoughts even after I leave the company, without having to save my opinions in a text file.

And with respect to email, the "instant messengers" have this property of being, you know, "instant", which sometimes is a blessing, but in the field of reviewing books, a thoughtful and demanding process, is more of a bane, and the communication model of a "topic" and "a long and thoughtful message citing multiple contributions of other participants" is quite fitting.