LibraryThing – My New Thing

A few days ago I discovered LibraryThing, a social networking site for booklovers. Think Myspace for bibliophiles. What a good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Envy aside, I’m surprised—amazed really—that the site has been around for two years and this is the first time I’ve come across it. Google has some explaining to do.

Here are the things I like:

• You can sign-up with just a username and password. No email required. No forms to fill out.
• It’s easy to find people with similar literary interests.
• The excellent search and browsing features.
• The best use of tagging on the Internet.
• The recommendation engine is way better than Amazon’s version.
• The Zeitgeist page, which features every imaginable statistic about the LT community. As a data analyst, I have to love this. Some of the statistics are remarkable, like the guy with over 14,000 books in his library. One guy. 14,000 books.

Here are the things I don’t like:

• It can be a lot of work, at least initially. Part of the reason this post doesn’t link to my LT profile is because I haven’t finished inputting the hundreds of books I own.
• The site has a lot of features, but there’s no Help section. And the FAQ page is almost impossible to find.
• While I’m enamored with the idea of networking with fans of my favorite authors/books, I’m not sure I want to let the whole world know what’s in my personal library in order to do that. I realize I could take the Spiderman approach and hide my identity behind a clever username like Not-Jamel-007, but then I can’t link my LT profile to any site that includes my real name—like this blog.

Notwithstanding these few minor annoyances, I have to say that LibraryThing is my favorite site right now.

But it’s not a panacea. Over 200,000 members and only 5 of them thought A Little Yellow Dog was worthy of five stars. Go figure.