[Social Networks] Why I'm Still On Shelfari

I've been a Shelfari user since 2007 and surprisingly, I'm still a pretty active user. I didn't think that I'd remain on such a specialized social network since (1) I kinda figured sites like this were fated to die in the wake of Facebook and (2) Facebook. But I'm still on Shelfari and I've given up Flixster, which was another specialized social network that I had signed up for at the same time I joined Shelfari.

In 2007 Amazon invested heavily in the site and about a year later they completed acquired the site. It took a while before we really started to see proper integration or enhancements to the site since then but in recent weeks we've finally come full circle.




As announced their official blog, Shelfari started allowing users to sign into the site using their Amazon logins. But this is more than just an excuse to get rid of one more login - it's opened the doors to much tighter integration between Amazon and Shelfari and who knows what else in the future.

[Social Networks] Is It Time to Leave Multiply?

Image via CrunchBase

A few years back I decided to streamline my online activities and cut down on my social networks. It took some doing but I eventually killed of Friendster, Ringo and Birthday Calendar at the very least a few other specialized ones. What I was left with was pretty much LiveJournal for my personal blogging, Shelfari for my books, Flixster for my love of movies and Multiply to act as my photo sharing center and pretty much mirror of my personal blog and my Geeky Guide reviews. The arrangement has largely worked out over the years, that is until I finally gave in and created a Facebook account.

As annoying as some of the changes have been to Facebook, the site remains one of the most robust social networks (and gaming website) that I've ever seen and the ease of which I can share random images, videos and interesting links is something that's hard to match using any other service.

Recently Multiply has been making a number of changes too and what's most annoying about the changes is not just how awkward the interface has become, but the fact that they're clearly trying to copy Facebook in some made attempt to remain competitive somehow. This has me thinking - is it time to leave Multiply?

As always, the main things keeping me on Multiply on Multiply are (1) the sheer volume of content I've loaded onto my profile and (2) the network of contacts I maintain there. Number 2 isn't as big an item anymore, I know - most of these same friends are also on Facebook or share some other network I cater to like Plurk or Twitter. Ultimately, contacts were one of the last things tying me to Friendster as well when I was weighing my options and it became a no-brainer whether or not I should stick around.

So now it becomes a question of content - my personal blog entries are all there, albeit only as an exact mirror of my LiveJournal blog. Most of the photos that I have on Multiply are already on Facebook, although migrating those uniquely on Multiply will be painful since I no longer have the hi-res originals for any of those photos.

Oh Multiply, I was much happier with your old interface and how this kept you unique. Now your Inbox is clearly trying to mimic Facebook's News Feed. You've added the option to create Notes as a way to "compete" with Facebook's status messages. You've even added a suggested friends feature just like Facebook. Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to clone Facebook? If Multiply starts offering applications, I am so done and over with the site and I'll just stick with Facebook, I suppose. Why should I maintain two sites that try to do the same thing, albeit one does it a lot better.

And it really does! Sharing videos, links and individual images are a LOT easier on Facebook than they are on Multiply. Why the heck did you change your video import process? Why does a new tab / window need to be opened to edit the video I just imported from YouTube? Why is posting a link so complicated? Why did you have to hide my nice visual network calendar like that? The questions keep on coming.

Have you readers ever found yourself in the same fix? Do you find yourself wondering why your social network of choice has turned into yet another Facebook clone? Do you ever find yourself thinking that you're maintaining too many sites that all do the same thing?

What's your criteria for whether or not a social network or website is worth keeping? When do you decide to abandon ship? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter- just mention it in the comments or maybe even email or IM me directly.

[Social Networks] A Look at the New Shelfari

In recent weeks, book-centric social network Shelfari has made a number of updates and improvements and it's about time like a geek like me settle down and talk about them. After all, this is the one of the few social networks that I still cater to, mainly because I use it as a virtual library.

First thing you'll notice is the overall new look with a cleaner header, a more thought-out series of tabs dividing Shelfari's various features in logical groups that stand out more in the current color scheme and a more integrated updates page covering any new friend requests, new activity related to books on your shelf, a more convenient view of comments called Public Notes left on your page and other items related to your friends and your groups.

Not a bad start to things, but the real treat comes in later.



The biggest change definitely has to be the new look to the shelf, as was announced last December. Instead of just one view of things with slow-loading pop-ups and even slower navigation tabs, the shelf now features a rich wooden skin to make it seem like those nice old shelves at gran's place and new sub-levels to your bookshelf covering books you've actually read, books you're reading, books you plan on reading and books you own. It helps distinguish what books you really have versus those you just might have an e-book copy of or may have just read after having borrowed it.

Overall I have to admit there have been big improvements in page loading time. They've added a lot more options to the pop-up detail windows so you don't have to navigate away from the shelf view so much in order to change shelf assignments for a book or to write a review. These were newer bells and whistles just launched this January.

I still wish you could manage tags well enough from the shelf view, but then you can't have it all, I suppose.



The actual Book pages aren't that drastically different. You still get the same rich set of information about the book in question, links to members and reader groups that have the same book listed in their shelves and of course tagging options and reviews. I'm happy it saves changes a bit faster than before, although you can still feel the seconds ticking away as the "Updating" dialog continues. The best change I've seen so far, as subtle as it is, is the fact that tags are now organized alphabetically when you are typing out your tags, so it's easier to double-check what "standard" tags you have already used previously. I just wish they hadn't disabled the feature automatically marks used tags in bold, thus also helping you identify if you typed your tag correctly, at least based on past tags used.

Overall Shelfari has managed to release a wide array of performance tweaks and UI improvements that definitely give you more reasons to stick around with the site to see how far it'll go. As much as I have respect for LibraryThing, they still require you to pay for more than 200 books whereas Shelfari remains to be free and they're steadily working on design improvements. Kudos to Shelfari! Let's see what other features they might roll out this year.

[Web] Resisting Social Networks

Tipping Point + Social Media Network by undersound

These days, social networking sites seem all the rage. I have to admit that in the beginning, I did my fair share of exploring such sites. I was out and about on the web early enough to experience SixDegrees.com, what many consider to be one of the first social network services on the web. While it died out by 2001, the framework was pretty much there.

For a time I had a number of profiles - I had accounts on Friendster, Downelink, Orkut and even defunct local GLBT network Fabuloush for a time. Heck, I even had an account on the notorious hook-up site Guys4Men for what it was worth. As the number of social networks grew, I got more and more saturated and eventually in mid-2005, I decided to clean up my online accounts and get rid of the clutter. I left all those social networks behind.

Most of my friends could never understand why I did that - having a Friendster account in the Philippines seems almost like a requirement for the online generation of today. I guess I got tired of all the people claiming to be friends with me and so it just felt too weird. Throw in all the people at the office who knew of me but did not know me personally, and it all just seemed overly weird.

These days I only have Multiply, Shelfari and Flixster. I liked Multiply since it's a great place to host photos, videos and a back-up of my LiveJournal plus you have better relationship definitions and viewing controls. Shelfari is really just an online version of my library and Flixster plays on my love for writing reviews. The last two are keen because of how focused their natures are.

Now that doesn't stop people from trying to get me back on the social networking bandwagon. Friends and family alike keep sending me invites for this network and that. I doubt I'll ever go back to Friendster - it just seems overly cluttered as compared to the modern offerings these days. I don't feel at all tempted by MySpace given how public it seems and more often than not it has become a haven for sexual predators, haha. Don't even get me started on LinkedIn since I think I spend enough time with my officemates so getting into a social network them doesn't make sense to me.

Facebook seems to be getting a lot of attention these days and there's been a significant increase in invitations for the site that I've been receiving as of late. A friend arguing for the site pushed how the applications were really what made Facebook different even though it started just as a college-centric social network service. Still, I don't see a big reason why I should just yet.

Even though I like the more focused networks, I don't feel inclined to join either iLike or iMeem anytime soon. I like my music but I don't see myself hanging around a website built around music since I'm never any good at remembering artists, albums or song titles.

Others argue that it's a great blog-promotion tool to get into one of these things but I don't know if that's the track to go. Is there really a significant rise in traffic brought on by social network activity? I don't think it would be enough to merit all the spam and bacn that comes with it.

So what do you think? Am I just being a stick in the mud for keeping out of the bigger social networks for now? Do you need to be sociable to really enjoy these sites? I'm really looking for your comments and thoughts on the subject and wondering if you can explain why you continue to support these sites. Do you have a particular social network you feel especially strongly about? Why would you recommend it to someone like me?

Let the comments fly!

[GeekyCast] My Book Collection

Today I just wanted to talk about my book collection as any proud geek would talk about the closest thing he has to children. I tried to take the time to describe what I liked about each series but then I found myself simply enumerating the titles given how many books I wanted to cover and how much time I limit myself to in terms of these GeekyCasts.

Do we share book interests? Then don't be afraid to leave a comment, IM a message or email me! Let's talk books and totally geek out over our favorite fandoms! I would love to hear from you.

You can also view my library over on Shelfari for a more detailed listing of my titles. It helps to sort them by author.

Read on!


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[Web] A Closer Look at Flixster and Shelfari

Some time back I wrote about how specialized social networks were becoming as opposed to the catch-all sites like MySpace and Friendster. While I did an initial review, I think it's about time to revisit the two sites since I've been using them for a month.



Flixster is a site that's all about movies. I didn't think I'd have that much fun on the site but I was surprised with the rich suite of activities and doohickeys one can fool around with on the site.

You start off by taking a Movie Compatibility Test which assigns a sort of score for you such that when you compare to other users, you can estimate how well you may or may not get along with them based on your opinions on movies. I like the option since you don't end up adding people to your contact list who end up being totally incompatible with you.

I think the best thing about the site is the ease of use of the various tools. Rating movies is amazingly simple and the system can continually pump out more and more movies for you to rate so you may find yourself rating films for hours on end without realizing it. The same goes for the various quizzes derived from user-generated content. Your profile page can be pretty dynamic since it lists the movies you've ranked, the movies you marked as favorites, actors and actresses you liked, your quiz scores and many more. On top of all that, you can skin your site using your favorite films as themes.

The site is highly interactive and never seems to run out of things for you to do, depending on your preferences, which is the best thing about the site. It's not at all static and how much you get out of it depends on your level of participation.



I wrote about Shelfari some time back and my initial impressions were pretty good. The catalog function seemed to be its greatest asset and I was devoting a lot of time to getting my account set up completely before really exploring.

The problems with the site lie there - once you've set up your shelf, the experience kinda stalls. In order to write reviews, you need to visit the individual book pages, which is pretty cumbersome. Why can't we rate books direct from our shelves? It doesn't help that the site still loads slower than molasses even after a month of waiting for performance to improve.

Find friends isn't all that intuitive and the discussion groups aren't that amazing. For a site that had the potential to be pretty smart, a lot of the talk ain't all that. Maybe I'm expecting too much, I don't know. It's just that I never found any of the threads to be all that impressive or involving.

So Shelfari kinda falls flat on its face once you've been on the site more than a week. There just seems to be nothing interesting to do. Darn. And I was so hopeful for the site, too.

Related Links:

• [Web] Specialized Social Networks
  
• [Web] Shelfari

[Web] Shelfari

You may or may not have noticed, but I pretty much stopped updating this blog after my previous entry discussing how social networks are becoming more and more specific. I couldn't help it - I fell prey to of the sites I had been discussing in a totally geeky rush.

The culprit is Shelfari, which is the social bookmarking service for books. Who would have thought that playing librarian would be so fun? Practically after a day's worth of playing around on the site, I learned this lesson the hard way.

Of course this site isn't for everyone - it tends to reward the well-read, or at the very least those individuals with large libraries of read or unread books. You can either upload any pre-exiting library file you might have (like who even has those?) or just search for your books in any variety of ways such as title, author, ISBN or whatever. Of course with most books having multiple versions, the truly obsessive compulsive are bound to search by ISBN in order to get the best matches possible.

Yeah, yeah, I'm guilty of doing just that.

Once you have your library built, the time comes to invite friends, join book groups or just see which users have the most number of books in common with you. In all likelihood, these are the people you're going to want to know better or to seek book advice from. The site also allows users to rate and review books and see how these same titles were reviewed over on Amazon, which helps generate revenue for the site.

The principle is insanely simple but any true geek is bound to get hooked as you find the need to encode every single title in your home. There will be some bugs if you have a large number of non-US books, but the site owners state they're working on making Shelfari more global in scale.

The catalog side of Shelfari might be enough for most - it's an efficient way of knowing what you have on your shelves for that day you might want to finish off the last of the books you purchased yet forgot about and left them gathering dust. If you're more daring, you can try exploring the social network side of things to see what the user pool is like. Given most people on the site are true book lovers, expect a higher level of intelligence in your exchanges, which might be a welcome relief for some given previous experiences with other more "diverse" social networks.

Go on, try signing up and see where things get you. In time, you'll find yourself looking for more books to add to your shelf whether you actually own them or if you just read them once before. While you're there, feel free to look me up and we might have some books in common.

Photo linked from sindrityr's photostream

[Web] Specialized Social Networks

Have you all noticed how social networks seem to be getting more and more specific? Of course we still have the major players like MySpace and Friendster dominating their respective markets while attempting to be the end-all, be-all sites for all your social networking needs. On the other hand, there are smaller, more focused social networking sites popping up here and there.

I started thinking about this when Webware posted an entry about a social bookmarking service for books called Shelfari, which definitely looks very promising. I admit that I'm a major book geek and sites like this, which are designed to help you find more books that you may potentially like based on your current library, definitely appeal to me.

This reminded me of Flixster, a social network that focuses on movies, which a friend of mine introduced to me some time back. I didn't sign up at the time since I was trying to get away from the get-as-many-friends-as-you-can culture of the big social networking sites. However the concept behind this site also appealed to me and signing up was definitely tempting.

There are surely more sites out there with specialized topics such as iLike, which is all about music, which definitely seems to be a growing trend these days. Are we trying to get away from the jack-of-all-trades style social networks and moving towards more meaningful ones? I have to admit the thought appeals to me and it gives the sites a lot more usefulness and meaning as compared to being sites dedicated to just indicating how many supposed "friends" you have in the world.

Do you know of any specialized social networks? Leave a comment and talk about the ones you like best! Or if you think that we shouldn't leave the big ones like MySpace or Friendster, you can talk about that too. The Geeky Guide wants to hear your ideas!