Online Media Cultist

There are a handful of really good places to discover books and interact and share with other booklovers. Amazon is the titan of this space, of course, but there are other scrappy contenders that serve some cool functions, particularly on the social media side of things.

Shelfari has long been a standout in terms of its visual display. Giving the illusion of browsing actual book shelves and the ability to enjoy beautiful and interesting and unique book covers is a way to truly extend the experience of being a real world bookstore (without the annoyance and expense, I’d argue!). Borders.com switched to a similar interface as well, and its easy to see why. On top of cool visual browsing, Shelfari also offers a host of social features.

Well, it seems that Amazon acquiring Shelfari. I’m not sure what this will mean for the health of the online books business, but I am selfishly hoping that Amazon will eventually roll out a version of its Kindle product with a dazzling colorful visual browsing interface.

After the seventh and final Harry Potter epic, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is released on July 21st, millions around the world will be thrilled and subsequently saddened that there will be no further Potter adventures to look forward to. No one will be sadder, of course, than Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury, who will have to find ways to replace a cash cow the likes of which the publishing world has never seen before.

The UK’s Independent reports now that Bloomsbury will take the lead in developing a “literary version” of MySpace, a social networking site for book lovers. As Mashable points out, there are already several players in this space (and in social networking-ville, every space has players, and many are lousy with them), including GoodReads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing.

LibraryThing has been around for some time, and has a low budget yet functional and organic feel to it. Shelfari, which is backed by Amazon, has a higher gloss sheen and kind of feels like a Flickr of books, using large thumbnails of book jackets to help people identify their literary selves.

Speaking of Amazon, I think they’re the company who really has the biggest opportunity to claim this space. All the pieces are there: they have the audience and the site is packed to the rafters with social networking-style features such as recommended items, wish lists, friending, reviews (i.e. journaling or blogging), and so on.

I looked at a user profile on Amazon this morning and was surprised at how robust the feature set already is. I think the real challenge is to make this profile experience – the core of any social networking site – more prominent and relevant to Amazon visitors, who are mostly there to browse for books, DVDs, or other items.

Meanwhile, TechCrunch reports that the social networking sprawl is spilling over to the browser itself, with new Mozilla product The Coop bringing friending and media-sharing right into the Firefox browser. Next stop: the desktop.