Amazon just announced the acquisition of the start-up book sharing company Shelfari. They are on a roll with literary-related purchases, as just earlier this month, they bought AbeBooks, an online seller of rare and used works. Now, what makes this Shelfari purchase a tad more interesting is the fact that one of their main competitors is LibraryThing. And AbeBooks just happens to own 40% of LibraryThing. Keeping it in the family Amazon.
LibraryThing however, is not seeming to have that much respect for the Shelfari site. Just yesterday they wrote on their site that Shelfari is a “clone” and that it is “..somewhat less intellectual, less featureful”, among other zingers. And there they are practically cousins.
Others seem to have glowing praise for the stand out user interface of Shelfari, which is rather different from the same old-same old seen on many such sites. They provide what basically amounts to pop-ups within the pop-ups when you mouse-over a book...something you just rarely see done...and it actually works surprisingly well for the choices it offers you. Once you are in the menu, you are given check boxes instead of buttons, which allow for multiple selections, although again breaks standard UI “rules”. The thing is, this gadget is very intuitive while you are interacting with the book; it makes your choices simple even for the novice.
Despite the praise for the Shelfari UI, there are those out there that feel they have some less than above-board practices in other areas. Words like ”shady spamming and astroturfing” were flung out there by people commenting on the acquistion in defense of why Librarything was less than thrilled with the competition they would be getting from Shelfari.
I guess time will tell whether they will be around for a while, or shelved rather quickly.
Via [TechCrunch]
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