I’ve decided to make myself a virtual bookshelf and thanks to Shelfari, I am now able to. I think it’s an interesting and more visual method of sharing what books I own and my opinion of them. The more typical aspect of Shelfari is the “others who own this book … also own … “. One thing I do like about Shelfari is that they are not depending on Amazon’s infrastructure so much and are trying to have their own database of the different books out there. It does to some degree “learn” about new books through an option of searching on Amazon when it can’t find a particular book on its own database. I am curious as to how much more effective Shelfari will be at providing new and creative ways for people to find new books that would be of interest to them.
For the meantime, you may check out My Bookshelf on the menu link or check out the public page via Shelfari.
—– Update —–
On a side note, I started reading about Shelfari and realized that Amazon.com is investing in the relatively new startup. How unfortunate that we just can’t get away from Amazon and that the online retailer is almost everywhere with little competition. Don’t get me wrong, I love Amazon and the ideas that they have brought to the table but I believe independent diversity and competition in a business environment is necessary in order to truly push forward the customer’s best interest. That being said, the fact that Amazon invested heavily into IT infrastructure technology of its own makes it quite the heavy weight to compete against.
