Amazon Closing Shelfari, Merging it with Goodreads

Last week Amazon revealed plans to close Shelfari, a social network for book lovers with various recommendation and sharing features.

Ever since Amazon purchased Goodreads back in 2013, a similar but more popular service, the writing was on the wall (pardon the pun).

Amazon has been neglecting Shelfari for years, and now it’s officially getting the ax.

If you login to Shelfari you get greeted with the following message:

Shelfari is in the process of merging with Goodreads and is no longer accepting new accounts. We recommend joining Goodreads.com if you haven’t already done so.

Calling it a merger is just a nice way of saying Shelfari is closing down for good.

The merger officially takes place on March 16th, 2016. Amazon says users have until then to get their stuff and get out, figuratively speaking.

Lots of Shelfari members are understandably upset with the decision to close the community for good. There’s even a petition setup to try and prevent the Shelfari, Goodreads merger. But that’s unlikely to stop a giant like Amazon even if every Shelfari member signed it.

This isn’t the first book-related project that Amazon has killed off. They did the same thing with Stanza (a once popular ebook reading app) and Mobipocket (a once popular ebook store). Buy the competition and then eliminate them, no matter how small the company is—that’s Amazon.

via: The Reader’s Room