Amazon Invests in Shelfari

Amazon has invested $1 million in Seattle based Shelfari, beating out at least one venture firm that competed for the deal. Shelfari is a website where users input all of the books they own, and have an online visual representation of their library to share with others. Users can share their library through the Shelfari website or via a widget, and make money by linking to the books for sale at Amazon. They launched well after competitor LibraryThing, which was itself partially acquired last year by ABEbooks.

People say they like Librarything.com for their book collection, and SwapSimple.com for books swapping.

For UK readers, http://www.readitswapit.co.uk is quite similar but also allows you to swap your books for free. It has around 100,000 books now and is the UK’s largest book swapping site.

SocialWay.com, on the other site is a generalized version of the “book sharing” sites - it allows you to build a list of things you have (books, tools, movies etc.) and share it with people you trust (e.g, friends, friends of friends, or the general public). The mission behind the site is to be environmental friendly by reducing co2 emissions due to sharing resources.