The web is my oyster. It’s where I go to book a holiday, to find that tune I heard on the radio, to find a recipe for pumpkin pie… And it’s where I go to find new books and fellow book lovers.

It all started with Amazon way back in 1994. I was among their first and most enthusiastic customers back then. They even sent an Amazon mug to say thank you.

Originally, all you could do was search for and order books. Later, Amazon started to give recommendations: “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Ilium and Olympos”. Eventually, customers could rate books and write reviews. This proved to be a very successful business model and Amazon inspired a multitude of similar socially powered online businesses.

Silently, Amazon has developed the social aspect further. The Your Account page now is a profile page where you can add a photo of yourself, describe your favorite books and connect with friends.

In choosing a site for social networking, the number of active users is of great importance. Amazon is in a league of its own, being one of the most visited sites on the net.

But traffic is not the only consideration. Use of ease, advanced functionality and networking options are also important. Read on to learn about my top 5 social web sites for book lovers.

Librarything

Has blog widgets, rss, Facebook integration, groups, and suggestions.

Librarything is a bookshelf site that has been around since 2005. Unlike many of the other book sites it can be set up to search the Library of Congress or any of a number of national libraries (even the Norwegian National Library) in addition to amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr etc. I have books in many languages, from ancient Greek to Russian, so this is my favorite feature.

Librarything is easy to use. Even though it is not the most stylish of the contenders, it has intuitive navigation. It is easy to organize your books by tagging them and you can sort them and view them in a number of ways. If, like me, you have lots and lots of books, you’ll be happy to know Librarything lets you add books by scanning barcodes.

There are also many ways to enjoy the Librarything community: You can review books and read other peoples’ reviews. You can check out other people’s libraries, see who has the most similar library to yours, swap reading suggestions and so forth. Like Amazon, LibraryThing also makes book recommendations based on the collective intelligence of the other libraries.

Here’s a complete review of Librarything.

Shelfari

Has blog widgets, Facebook integration, groups

Shelfari is another bookshelf site. It is, with the exception of Amazon, the most popular of the five. It is also, by far, the best looking. Your books are displayed with cover images on a bookshelf. This looks great and a menu lets you sort your shelf by date added, rating, author or title. For some reason, you can’t sort books by tag, though. And you can’t choose to list books without the pretty cover view. If you have lots of books, this is inconvenient.

It’s easy to add books. For instance, you can search for an author and then add books by the click of a button. Each book has a page where you can rate it, write or read reviews, see other members who own it, groups that discuss it and more.

There are many ways to explore the community, find friends and discover books. But if are out to catalogue a large book collection, not just displaying your favorites and connecting to book soul mates, you might be better off using Librarything.

Amazon

Has suggestions, 3rd party Facebook integration

Amazon is not a bookshelf site. But it is probably the single most powerful site for finding books and like-minded book lovers.

With its superior number of users and a huge amount of user data, Amazon can give great book suggestions. And if you are looking for more than just books, Amazon has just about anything.

Some of usual the Web 2.0 stuff is missing, though: There is no rss stream of recent additions, no tag cloud, no blog widgets.

Goodreads

Has rss, blog widgets, Facebook integration, groups

Goodreads is another bookshelf site. It has all the social aspects you want: Friends, groups, blog widgets and more. In addition, it also has some powerful features which makes it more advanced than Shelfari, although not as advanced as Librarything:

You can sort your books by title, author, your rating, average rating, bookshelves, date read or date added. You can display your books in a list, a list with cover images or just the cover images. And you can search Goodreads or just your books.

Bookcrossing

Has groups, wild books and book hunts

Bookcrossing is a different kind of social book site. It has a bookshelf and it lets you add books in any language. But the bookshelf is not the primary attraction.

The social aspect of Bookcrossing is what makes it stand apart. We are not talking about social of the Web 2.0 kind. This is real life social: No rss or Facebook apps. You register a book and receive a Bookcrossing ID which you use to tag the book, physically, and release it. This means leaving it in your favorite café or on the train or the tram. What a lovely idea!

When someone find the book you set free, they can use the ID number you tagged it with to register where it is traveling. You can also ask to be notified when someone releases a book in your neighborhood and then go hunting for it. And there are lists where you can browse recently released or caught books, most traveled books and more.