Today’s news of Amazon acquiring the popular book social networking site GoodReads gives one pause. That is because Amazon already owns Shelfari, and also has a 40% stake in LibraryThing — arguably three sites that offer the same basic value proposition. Allow me to speculate. And let’s be clear, that’s all this is — speculation.
Why would Amazon want to keep three different sites going that offer basically the same kind of service? Sure, what they really want is the user data — but why pay top dollar to get it by keeping three independent efforts going? Why indeed.
Jeff Bezos hasn’t gotten where he is by being a bad businesman, so my money is on a shakeout ahead. GoodReads appears to be winning the war of popularity in this space, according to Alexa Rank, so the smart money would be on GoodReads swallowing up Shelfari in a merger to gain the cost savings. LibraryThing is a bit more complex, as Amazon does not (yet) have a majority stake. Amazon could either let them keep going while siphoning user data out the back end, or it could make a play to grab it all. Whatever happens, I think the next few years will be interesting in this space.
Your own speculations are welcome in the comments.
About Roy Tennant
Tim Spalding’s thoughts about “LibraryThing: How to succeed in an Amazon/Goodreads world”
http://www.librarything.com/topic/152033
The spirit of indipendence is still alive with the LibraryThing project.
I think your speculation is dead on. I cannot think of a winning proposition that would allow both Goodreads and Shelfari to operate independently. The announcement made no mention of Shelfari, which is telling. If there were no plans to end this site, I believe that statement would have been included.