Last week, online super-store Amazon bought Shelfari, a book sharing and social networking site for book lovers. This follow Amazon’s investment of $1 million in the site back in February 2007.

A few weeks ago Amazon bought AbeBooks, a vendor of rare and used books from independent publishers. Interestingly, as part of that acquisition, Amazon also got a stake in Shelfari’s chief competitor, LibraryThing, of which AbeBooks had 40 percent ownership.

While Amazon may look to merge Shelfari and LibraryThing, it may first need to overcome a rather nasty rivalry between the two. LibraryThing has accused Shelfari of spamming and “astroturfing” (paying staff to post enthusiastic blog comments) and being a LibraryThing ‘clone’.

Source: Richard MacManus, “Amazon Buys Shelfari and its Innovative UI”, Read Write Web, August 26, 2008, Jason Kincaid , “Amazon Acquires Shelfari: Moves To Corner Book-Centric Social Networks”, TechCrunch, August 25, 2008, Tim Spalding, “LibraryThing strategy in an age of Amazon/Shelfari”, LibraryThing, August 26, 2008

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