Amazon Acquires Shelfari

Amazon is turning its investment in Shelfari, a book-centric social network, into a full acquisition, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Financial details haven't been released, but Shelfari CEO Josh Hug confirmed the acquisition on Shelfari's blog:

We've got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon's expertise in building a platform where people come to share ideas, there are a lot of new opportunities in the future that will benefit each of you. In the meantime, you'll continue to have access to the great community and tools that you've always known and used on the site.

Amazon earlier this month acquired AbeBooks, which is a minority investor in Shelfari's chief competitor, LibraryThing. As the Seattle P-I notes, LibraryThing had a few choice words about Shelfari's business practices in 2007.

Update 8/26/08, 11:25 a.m. Tim Spalding from LibraryThing weighs in on the Shelfari deal. (Via the Reading 2.0 list)

(Via Jose Afonso Furtado's Twitter stream.)

Leave a comment


TOC Comment Guidelines






Stay Connected
RSS TOC RSS Feeds
 News Posts
 Commentary Posts
 Combined Feed
 New to RSS?
Newsletter Subscribe to the TOC newsletter.
Tarsier Icon Follow TOC on Twitter.
Newsletter Join the TOC Facebook group.
Newsletter Join the TOC LinkedIn group.
TOC Widget Get the TOC Headline Widget.
Search
TOC In-Depth

Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales

This report tests assumptions about free digital book distribution and P2P impact on sales. Learn more.


StartWithXML: Making the Case for Applying XML to a Publishing Workflow StartWithXML Research Report

The StartWithXML report offers a pragmatic look at XML tools and publishing workflows. Learn more.


Tools of Change for Publishing tutorial DVDs TOC 2008 Tutorial DVDs

Dive into the skills and tools critical to the future of publishing. Learn more.

Tag Cloud
TOC Community Topics