Books get often published in different editions and with different covers. Soon you will be able to choose the cover you like - we simply didn't implement it yet.
To connect with friends go to friend finder and search for the email address, user name or real name of the Readgeek member you are looking for. At the members profile you find the button for befriending.
In the first place we want to recommend good books. Simply because we believe that books can be an important part of education and culture as well as self-development. We also want to have an income - hence we placed links to online book companies. They give us a commission for every book sold when they can see that a customer came from readgeek.com. Since those earnings are quite meager we also placed ads on the website :(