As expected, the first quarter of ’08 has seen a whirlwind of activity from the Big 3 of the Book Social Network world. All have added new employees and all have added a host of new functionality to their websites. Here is a recap of some of the goings on:
LibraryThing:
-started the year off with the unveiling of Thomas Jefferson’s library. They have since added nine others, ranging from Marie Antoinette to Tupac Shakur, and have a dozen or so heavyweights in the process of being added.
-launched a neighborhood bookstore program which integrates the inventory of participating local bookstores with the hope that one day as Tim Spalding says “You’ll be able to find a book in your town as easily as you find a pizza.” About a dozen bookstores have signed up including the king of independents, Powell’s Books in Portland.
-LibraryThing local exploded on the scene with some 16,000 venues being added within a very short period of time.
-recently integrated Google’s Book Search API so that all those scanned books are now a click away for LibraryThing users.
-LibraryThing Zen Garden where members can play with the front end of the website and sample or create their own visuals. Many people consider the site design as the weakest link in the LibraryThing chain and by opening it up to their members to improve just reiterates their commitment to being a truly open social network.
-added a blog to the mix. The blog is run by their newly hired Community Manager who is also getting paid to read. Shelfari recently held a poll among its members to determine what book Amanda should read next.
-added a mobile component
-launched a MySpace widget to complement their previously launched Facebook widget
-last week they hired publishing heavyweight David Nudo to be their Director of Sales and Marketing. Nudo was formerly the publisher of Publisher’s Weekly and ran the book advertising world for the New York Times.
-hired their first full-time engineer and a community manager.
-enhanced their librarian offerings.
-launched a Facebook widget.
-launched a quotes feature where you can display your favorite literary quotes on your blog.
-tripled the size of their author/book events section by partnering with Book Tour. This was announced days after LibraryThing local went live and, who it turns out, had been working on partnering with Book Tour until the deal recently fell apart.
There is also murmurs of a 4th player ready to enter the fray, Bookmesh.com. They were snooping around the blogosphere recently looking for 50 alpha-testers; the BookMesh Elites (BME) is how they coined it. They promise to add something new to the mix.
Who knows when the pace will slow. There are still plenty of growth opportunities and there remain segments of the book world that are yet to be served by the new social technologies.
Luckily, people have different types of relationships with books so there is room for multiple players and it is becoming clearer with each new initiative that each of these companies has a segment in mind.
LibraryThing seems more people-powered and the level of involvement of their members feels different than that of the Shelfari and Goodreads tribes. It is more bookish and less publisher/author/review centered. It is a new school technology with a new school approach; whereas, Shelfari and Goodreads are more of a new school technology with an old school approach, Shelfari seems to be aiming at the traditional publishing world for the potential ad dollars and Goodreads looks to be courting A- and below writers to boost their author component. They lean publisher/author while LT leans library and collector.
There is room for them all.
As Tim Spaulding of LT so aptly puts it:
“On the web, books are broken. A few small parts are solved or on their way—Amazon, Abebooks.com, Google, Powells—and this gives many the illusion that books are a solved problem. But the rest of the “bibliosphere” isn’t where it could be. Libraries and publishers, authors and most bookstores are adrift, and not part of the conversation.”
Amen.
The race is on.
Previous Book Patrol post “Goodreads Rising as the Year Ends in the Book Social Networking World.”