Bookjetty.....oh no, not another one

Phil Bradley pointed me in the direction of Bookjetty, another social cataloguing. Ummmm, I covered this area TWO YEARS AGO, and companies are still trying to beat Librarything. You'll have to do better than that Bookjetty.

Shelfari feel the stress

Having discussed previously Shelfari's bombarding of users and none users with spam, it seems there trying to climb out of a hole. Tim Spalding quotes Book Patrols article, in which they accuse Shelfari of Astroturfing, saying:-

Shelfari has engaged in some pretty dubious behavior including astroturfing (posting on blogs pretending to be users, not employees) and partaking in widespread spamming campaigns.

Shelfari CEO, Josh Hug, has defended himself from the claim of astro-turfing, by saying:-

As for the astroturfing, that was an unintended work of an unexperienced but well-meaning intern who failed to make himself known as he commented on blogs. That was not our intent and we were unaware that was going on. It has stopped.

If it was a rogue intern, why was he needing to do it? With $1million investment did they really require such a transparent way of doing this. I maybe a librarything fan boy, but shelfari have really been very stupid, and allowing an intern to do this (without keeping an eye on them) is dafter still.

Shelfari gets shot down........

Librarything has brought to my attention that its inferior competitor Shelfari has been spamming people. Whom Tim Spalding(the owner of librarything) describes (via another source as this):-

in the words of the well-known blog Gawker, "basically social networking rapists."

I've noted also that Shelfari has been emailing me a lot lately and its very annoying (and something librarything NEVER does).

Hopefully, shelfari will stop it soon.

Google's My library article

I noted from librarystuff article by Phil Bradley about Google mylibrary. Phil feels that :-

My advice - give this a miss entirely and don't waste any of your time on it. Use something like LibraryThing or Shelfari instead.

I think he is correct here as I have said before.

Netflix, are they joining Amazon?

Netflix, the DVD rental company has been making ruption in its share prices (so say Businessweek). Businessweek believe that Amazon could soon make an approach. With Amazon already acquiring Shelfari, Amazon seem to be cranking the investment up to increase there search facilities (and like businessweek, Amazon's unbox has hardly been a great success). The acquisition seems a pretty good one, as with there database on sales would greatly add to more longtail sales.

The week that was.........

Following on from last weeks article of the same title, i'm adding another 3 things I should have blogged more about on this blog. I hope to make this a regular thing. Topping the charts is :-

1. From lisnews comes the New York State Bill S2298- Protecting Children in the Internet Age. Seems very similar to DOPA or do I mean Social Networking Web Site Prohibition Act? Anyway, its another law regarding "requiring filtering software on computers in public libraries and schools to prevent minors from viewing indecent materials." Not again.....
2. Via Lorcan Dempseys blog I came accross David Rothmans blog on Shelfari and librarything. Rothman likes how you can transfer your list via librarything to shelfari, and feels this could be done via e-book downloads. I prefer a library and the physical object, but then I'm not a digital native.
3. Michael Stephens over on library crunch links to his interview with Robert Doyle (Executive Director of the Illinois Library Association) and the impact of American legislation on social networkung sites in the USA.

librarything and Shelfari coverage......take off in social cataloguing?

Librarything had some good coverage in the New York Times called A Cozy Book Club, in a Virtual Reading Room.
And with Shelfari getting $1million dollars investment from amazon. I like the idea of both librarything and shelfari, i'm always worried there business plan may fall down when more people suffer social networking fatigue. I suppose they'll add more features then........

Shelfari gets amazon investment

Nice to see the first web 2.0 company, Amazon has invested a minimum of $1 million in the company. I've spoken many times about shelfari (1, 2, 3), so hopefully Jeff Bezos can teach them a thing or to on being a web 2.0 company.

Pet bug......SHELFARI

I wonder if i'll ever stop writting about social cataloguing sites (1, 2, 3). But i've just learnt that shelfari has added groups for its site. Wow. Brilliant. 8 months behind librarything, and they at least created a few groups themselves. Has shelfari done that? Don't be silly, thats what the users are there to do (i there world anyway).......