Marc Schultz

Reality v. Bytes
July 11, 2007

Over at if:book, Ben Vershbow has posted an interesting compare-and-contrast between online social-netwoking bookshelf sites (like Shelfari, LibraryThing and Goodreads, which we covered in a feature on Monday) and the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar (or wood-and-nails, or cinderblock-and-2x4, etc) kind, examining the overlooked social aspect of the real thing. He's riffing off of William Drenttel's online paeon to traditional bookshelving, which accompanies 60 surprisingly interesting photos of one man's books in their environment.

On the opposite end of the internets is the student-centric social networking site that's hooked every college kid from the past three or four years, Facebook, which has added a feature that allows users to sync up their Facebook profile with their Shelfari bookshelf, like so:

Shelfari is already in bed with Amazon, who early this year invested a million dollars in the nascent site, for reasons that aren't exactly clear--the closest they've come to giving a reason (calls were not returned) comes from Amazon VP Greg Greeley in Shelfari's press release: "In a short period of time, Shelfari has succeeded in building a vibrant community around the experience of reading, and we are pleased to support them." It's possible the three-way connection could lead to something big--assuming Shelfari catches on as well as it's slightly older, more muscular competitor LibraryThing.

As for now, Facebook is open to anyone (until recently, it was open only to students), and it's hard to find a more concentrated group of educated 18-30-year-olds--I'm not sure how many more or less users Facebook has than, say, MySpace, but the user base is most certainly more bankably homogenous. The Shelfari tool, along with the rich trove of data attached to each Facebook profile, makes a unique consumer profile that publishers would be smart to explore.

Posted by Marc Schultz on July 11, 2007 | Comments (0)