Earlier today we reported that Amazon had acquired AbeBooks, an online retailer of rare and used books from independent publishers.
AbeBooks held a major (although not majority) stake in a site called LibraryThing, where the literati can list their favorite books and discuss them. Coincidentally, Amazon has put a reported $1 million into Shelfari, one of LibraryThing’s direct competitors (which also include GoodReads, BookJetty and many others). So it might not be surprising to see Amazon try to join the forces of these two modestly sized startups.
But if the history between LibraryThing and Shelfari is any indication, we’re more likely to see Amazon either place its bets on one and divest its shares in the other, or simply maintain a minority investment in both.
Tim Spalding, the founder of LibraryThing, has publicly denounced Shelfari for using dirty marketing tactics such as astroturfing blogs and spamming inboxes. And he hasn’t minced words or backed down from his charge that Shelfari is a “bad actor”, having repeated Gawker’s description of Shelfari as “basically social networking rapists” and criticized Shelfari’s attempts to fix its invitation system.
While Shelfari has publicly addressed the charges of astroturfing (calling it the “unintended work of an unexperienced but well-meaning intern”) and spamming (the unintended result of “explosive growth” and a poorly designed user interface), it hasn’t used its own corporate blog to lash back at LibraryThing. And since most of this drama occurred nearly a year ago, it’s possible that any bad blood as been surmounted. But factor in the fact that these two startups are based on opposite ends of the country (Shelfari in Seattle, Washington and LibraryThing in Portland, Maine), and it appears unlikely that Amazon’s acquisition of AbeBooks will result in any consolidation of the book-centric social networking space.
In any case, Spalding has publicly asserted that LibraryThing will continue to operate as an independent entity, sending only anonymized user data back to AbeBooks. When reached for comment, he did say that he was open to selling the same type of data to Amazon, but he insisted that he would never sell “core user data” to Amazon and that he really doubts anyone “will propose marriage” between his company and Shelfari.
Josh Hug, co-founder and CEO of Shelfari’s parent company Tastemakers, said he had no specific comments about the AbeBooks-Amazon deal, but he did say that “Amazon has been a very supportive investor and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them.”
Having dealt with Tim at a past startup, I can say that he is a large factor to why LibraryThing is not larger than it is today.
After using both LibraryThing and GoodReads, I much prefer GoodReads. To me their user experience communicates that they’re actually interested in books and the relationships people have with them. LibraryThing has a lot going on, but hasn’t helped me answer my most important question: What should I read next?
Winner: GoodReads.
Personally, I prefer LibraryThing over all others. In any case, I doubt Amazon pulling out or staying in will make or break LibraryThing. It’s got a solid core of supportive users and is filling its niche effectively.
It’s true. Shelfari spams your inbox like a mother. I keep getting emails from them that I have to delete. And they don’t let me opt out unless I login to their account, which is annoying because I’ve already forgotten my password. But seriously? Do I need my password to opt out of spam? I probably could have gotten the new password request and logged in and changed my spam settings in the time it takes for me to write this comment. But I’m writing more so because its annoying.
[Tim from LibraryThing] In fairness to Shelfari, I think that emails you agreed to is different. Anyway, if the emails are getting to you, a password reset will too.
According to Alexa or Compete, GoodReads looks like it’s about twice as big as either of these sites.
Quote from post
“But if the history between LibraryThing and Shelfari is any indication, we’re more likely to see Amazon either place its bets on one and divest its shares in the other, or simply maintain a minority investment in both.”
The only option not listed is taking majority share in both, what kind of a paragraph is that? prediction, you listed practically all the options, and how different would those options be if there was no history between the two?
Sorry, but this is just pointless paragraph.
see shelfari in action here…. http://www.goth...te.blogspot.com
the best book i’ve seen on shelfari so far…. http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2
“But if the history between LibraryThing and Shelfari is any indication, we’re more likely to see Amazon either place its bets on one and divest its shares in the other, or simply maintain a minority investment in both.”
Or Gobble them both. I read a few years ago, when all the properties will be owned by a dozen major players in the world.
I prefer Shelfari to all, and I haven’t ever received any spammy emails.
One major oversight in this analysis: Amazon already has a “library” type application called Your Media Library. While it is poorly advertised it has most of the key elements of the competitors in the field, providing a pseudo social network that allows you to track and share your inventory of books, DVDs, and just about anything else you purchased at Amazon.com.
Perhaps the actual answer will be that LibraryThing nor Shelfari are superseded from within Amazon.com itself.
We placed the order of CHEMISTRY: THE MOLECULAR NATURE OF MATTER AND CHANGE on Aug 26, 2008 and received a verification that order has been processed and shipped. Surprisingly, More than week after we got reply that it will take about a month to ship the order. I got a stupid reply like “As I advertise in my description that normally we will ship out the book in 24 hrs. However, the book you are order is temporary out of stock. I am trying to find the book. It may takes up to 1 month to ship out the book” Above email came form colorbooks2006@gmail.com on behalf of abebooks.com
WE SHOULD NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY
A small app that I have developed that allows embedding book images into blogs and webpages is BookBox:
http://www.lkozma.net/bookbox
See it embedded in my main page, for ex.
It doesn’t have the functionality of Librarything or Shelfari but it requires no registration and it takes a few seconds to set up.