Shelfari: Books in the Wild

There's an ever-increasing number of tools and services of the web 2.0 type popping up in cyberspace on a daily basis. This has spawned a new type of service itself: sites that help you find new widgets, 2.0 services, and other tools, all of which promise to facilitate something in your life which you either want or need help with. After slogging through the mucky jungles of several "find your tool" sites, I came across Shelfari.com, "The Site for Books and Readers." What could sound more like a great cyber hang out spot for an academic type like me than that? Other than UltimateKnowledge.org, where you can locate and download every piece of useful knowledge that ever existed directly to your brain through our new and improved quantum software... but of course, that's not quite on the web yet. Shelfari will keep me occupied for now.

Shelfari opened its virtual doors to adventuresome book lovers in October of 2006. Like many other social web services, it allows users to set up a profile, personalize content, record comments, and share with others. Like so many other nifty little web sites, it was bought up by a corporate giant: Amazon bought Shelfari in August of 2008, which explains where all the book images, links to buy books on Amazon, and Amazon ratings come from. To be fair, Shelfari also has Google Ads on their pages, so there are other book sellers being promoted here, but I'm sure Amazon is hoping to benefit from the "recommend," "review," and "discuss" functions on Shelfari as it does on Amazon.com. Word of mouth is a powerful selling tool, why not let the consumers do the work for you? But once again, I digress.

Going off on a tangent is another thing that's easy to do on Shelfari. Like Amazon.com, Shelfari will recommend books based on what you have on your personal shelf or whatever you are looking at, and each book's page has other clickable suggestions handily placed below the item description. If you don't get distracted reading the reviews, checking out who else has the book on their shelf, or exploring the groups who have the book, you can hop from one book to the next, like following a never-ending vine through vast stretches of knowledge and entertainment terrains. If you are like me, you may eventually loose complete track of where you are and where you've been, but if you've been adding books to your wish list or the "plan to read" section of your bookshelf, you will come out of your adventure in bookland with some swell souvenirs.

Your travel options through this cyber jungle include plenty of options for socializing with fellow tourists. As mentioned, there are groups to join, or you can create a new social destination (a.k.a. "group") focused on just about anything remotely related to whatever books you may be navigating. Groups have discussion functions that operate in standard forum style, but discussions for individual books can also be started or joined by anyone. These are accessed through the book's own page. If you are interested in a more one-on-one interaction, you can invite, find or make new friends. Shelfari will tell you which users it thinks are most like you ased on your book collection, and you can post notes on other people's pages, provided they have set their security options to allow it.

In a nutshell, Shelfari offers a cyber playland for book enthusiasts, with endless corners to while the time away in. If you have ever enjoyed losing yourself in a book, whether it be fantasy, horror, the latest popular science piece, or even those text books you bought because you had to, but kept because you wanted to, try out this site. You may discover your own, personal, literary oasis on the web.