Shelfari

I just became a member of Shelfari a few hours ago. I didn't know about your group till now -- it sounds good. I'll go check it out if I can get over being mad at Shelfari before I ask them to cancel my membership.

Because I'm really mad at them right now! They set the defaults up on their "invite your friends" page to dupe me into spamming my entire email contact list. That's the lowest of low! Of course I partly blame myself for being so dumb as to fall for it, but learning that the person who invited me made the same mistake makes me feel more like Shelfari is being intentionally misleading.

I hope they change the defaults on the "Invite friends" page, because I like the site and would like to stay a member. But I have my principles!

Librarything has more members and lists more books (i.e. not just what is on Shelfari's part-owner Amazon) I think Shefari is winning a lot of market share by encouraging this recent bout of spam.

Shelfari isn't quite the same as LibraryThing. Shelfari is much more community-centric, for one thing. Also the UI, while attractive has some huge problems.

That said, I kinda like both

I got multiple invitations from one person because Shelfari spammed her address list. I'm not joining until they fix that, it's a show stopper for me.

You have an option to not do that Dawno, it's just that it's not clear what you're doing when you select an icon/provide account info.

It shouldn't be an option - it should be the default, IMO. If it's not idiot proof I'm bound to mess it up.

I complained about it. I didn't spam, but that's just because I'm a nasty suspicious sort.

If anyone else has been getting as many of those emails as me this might help: http://www.shelfari.com/actions/emailoptout.aspx

Shelfari is more community based, but Library thing also have avenues for 'social networking' including discussions groups, reviews etc. Also I can actually list my books and list myself as their author (and so contact my readers) there.

I know it's an old thread but I wanted to revive the discussion about Shelfari. How active is it? I joined a few months ago, then forgot about it, then got back to it and I've been looking for groups to join but I find that most of them have very few members.

Are you guys on Shelfari and what do you think of it?

I'm on a bunch of the social book networking sites; I wrote about 'em here:

http://realbook.com/2009/03/30/social-networking-for-readers/

I didn't talk about the integration between Library Thing and Shelfari with Facebook, but I suspect that would intrigue a lot of you.

There are small smaller similar Facebook applications with external sites, but they don't seem terribly stable.

Very thorough and helpful article, thanks

Shelfari is one of a number of similar sites for authors or book lovers. A list of over 30 similar types of sites can be found here: places to list your books for free. I'm on both LibraryThing and Shelfari is anyone wants to be friends:

http://www.shelfari.com/mustreads

http://www.librarything.com/home/flashgordon

I have not spent too much time on either site. One recently sold to Amazon. However, if you are savvy, I could see them as being a good way to market your book directly to your target audience.

flashgordon said:

However, if you are savvy, I could see them as being a good way to market your book directly to your target audience.

Click to expand...

Actually, it's not -- both communities react rather hostilely to anything perceived as marketing. Facebook works better for that.

It is a way to interact with readers, and both will accept book donations directly from recognized legitimate publishers, which they then distribute to readers who review them on the site.