While I am in process of setting up my new blog, I tried out different social networking book sites that allow users to catalog their books, share reviews and share book lists.
Out of the few sites I tried, I am giving my votes to Shelfari and Library Thing.
Shelfari is voted by Mashable as one of the top 10 most beautiful social networking sites and it truly is great looking and easy to use.
LibraryThing ’s free account allows up to 200 books with a premium service if you want to add more and it has a great tagging feature. Shelfari, on the other hand seems to allow you to add as many books as you like (a great plus for me who have more than 200 books for sure).
I’ve read several comparisons and reviews of both and many seems to like Shelfari more, for its aesthetically pleasing look and more interesting “groups” while serious book lovers seem to prefer Library Thing.
For me, I like both for different features. I really like one of LibraryThing’s features that allow me to see how many books I have in common with another user/ friend. For Shelfari, I like the colorful pages and the easy one-click function whenever I add on new books.
My final vote between the two goes to Library Thing but I might change my mind as I go along.
Meantime, here’re my ever growing lists in both.
1) My Shelfari Book List
2) My LibraryThing Book List
16 Comments
August 11, 2007 at 8:07 pm
C’mon man, are you WordPressing, Livejournaling or Blogspotting?
August 11, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these sites. I’ll definitely take a look at them. Shelfari sounds quite interesting…
August 12, 2007 at 2:41 am
hah Brennan, I am gonna move to my own site at http://www.priscillatan.com, am testing a few stuff at the moment, so it’s everywhere. Bear with me for a while more.
Check out the book sites and let me know if you found any other cool ones to share.
August 12, 2007 at 2:47 am
Hi Mike, thanks for dropping by. You’ve some cool stuff on your blog. Enjoy checking out Shelfari!
August 17, 2007 at 1:37 am
hey..u really did it..u merged all ur three sites to one under priscillatan.com…wicked!! We need to have a party on this one..
August 17, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Goodreads.com is a nice one as well.
August 17, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Jason, yah! i got it up and running but unfortunately, didnt manage to merge everything. I only import a few old entries over. heh. Starting afresh!
August 17, 2007 at 6:39 pm
John, thank for the link. will check that out!
August 18, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I gave both a try and so far Shelfari is winning by a big margin. It seems to have a better feature set. Adding books and setting the proper cover is a lot easier with Shelfari. I do wish it had more options for displaying my library on other sites, though.
August 18, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Many friends prefer Shelfari too. The other one is at bookjetty.com
October 6, 2007 at 4:57 pm
[...] down to the event. I briefly mentioned BookJetty in one of my previous post when I was comparing social book sites and what is really cool about bookjetty is the SMS service that allows users to receive SMS about [...]
June 15, 2008 at 11:32 am
hey priscilla..nice world u got!
im doin a coursework on social networking sites..
could u pls suggest me few books i could refer to to help on this? u can drop me a mail..
thanks…n take care
December 14, 2008 at 10:47 am
Also check out http://www.100bestsocialnetworksites.com/books.html for an up to date list of the most popular book social network sites ranked by popularity. It is a new site still in beta.
December 18, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Thanks for sharing, Brian!
June 6, 2009 at 12:06 am
Hi Priscilla,
First time I come across your blog.
Thanks for the reviews, I just joined a few Social Networks for books and your view was helpful.
I guess I’ll add you once inside!
Cheers,
Miguel
June 7, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Glad the “review” was helpful.