So recently I was asked to review Librarything and Shelfari two social web sites based around the idea of social bookmarking and conversation. All around the idea of books. Reviewing books, talking about books, finding books, and interacting with books. Its a really fascinating idea after all and an interesting way to meet people. I had been meaning to try one of these programs so i signed up to both of them and have been fiddling around with them.
Overall the programs are fun ideas and pretty interesting offering a host of services. Librarything is proud to tell me these use amazon.com to search for their books. Librarything honestly has a lot more general options at first glance and a lot of different programs and sections groups, tags submissions list and a essentially it offers a lot of different things to users. Its search tools and options for tagging and connecting books are more advanced and honestly it can offer a lot of features.
however it doesn't have the same kind of amusing aesthetics that Shelfari offers. Shelfari is a bit more fun to look at. Selection of books is a lot easier and the search methods get some nice returns without using more advanced methods. It also has a lot of nice cover art and frankly the options it gives are a lot less complicated and a lot easier to find Librarything feels almost too crowded with options and it needs to redesign where things go make things less cluttered . Overall i like shelfari a bit more, despite the versatility of Librarything, but both are fun and I'll probably be using both when i have some "free time"
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