<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, librarything]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, librarything]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/librarything http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/librarything <![CDATA[The spam-happy history of Amazon.com's new social network Shelfari]]> Amazon.com's newly acquired book-readers social network, Shelfari, has a bad reputation. The main charges lodged: It has grown its userbase through a shady techniques such as automatically sending site invites to everyone in a new user's email address book. It's also believed to engage in "astroturfing" —- specifically, pretending to be users in blog comments to buff up its image. Gawker last year described the site as "basically social networking rapists" — a perhaps inelegant phrasing, but one that gets the point across.

Shelfari CEO Josh Hug — how can you dislike a man whose last name is "Hug"? —blamed the whole mess on "an unexperienced but well-meaning intern." Ironically, the company that exposed Shelfari's tactics was rival books social network LibraryThing. AbeBooks, a recently acquired Amazon.com subsidiary, owns 40 percent of LibraryThing. Who will be motivated to report on Shelfari's user-gathering tactics now? Oh, right — that would be you, gentle reader!

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5041847&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Amazon.com's purchase of Shelfari locks up competition]]> The most powerful player in the book business besides Oprah, Amazon.com, just got a little more powerful with the acquisition of Shelfari, a social network for bookworms. Not yet formally announced, the deal would give Amazon total control over a competitor to a similar site, LibraryThing, in which the company has already taken a stake through an earlier acquisition, according to Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter John Cook.

It makes sense: Why pay to develop your own social software when you can buy up existing technology and communities of potential customers as well? Never mind the apparent conflict of interest, or Shelfari's spammy history. Those concerns are for companies who aren't trying to corner nascent markets through vertical integration. (Photo by Tim Mansfield)

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