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Amazon has acquired Shelfari, a social network focused on books it has been involved with for a while already. A year and a half ago, Amazon invested $1 million in the site.

The Shelfari purchase is just the latest target in Amazon's acquisition spree. Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch elaborates, "The move comes less than a month after Amazon's acquisition of AbeBooks, a vendor of rare and used books from independent publishers. As part of that acquisition Amazon also got a stake in Shelfari's competitor LibraryThing, which AbeBooks had previously purchased a 40% stake in."

Shelfari allows users to:

- Build virtual bookshelves to express themselves to their friends and to the world

- Discover books that are popular in their trusted circles of friends

- Influence peers by rating and discussing books online

- Discover and learn from people with similar reading tastes

- Participate in online book groups to further explore literature and share ideas

- Interact with and learn from authors

Fans of the site needn't worry about the future under new ownership. Shelfari Co-founder Josh Hug writes on the official blog:

We've got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon's expertise in building a platform where people come to share ideas, there are a lot of new opportunities in the future that will benefit each of you. In the meantime, you'll continue to have access to the great community and tools that you've always known and used on the site.

It will be interesting to see how Amazon incorporates the social aspect of Shelfari into its own site. It could add a fun element to product pages and book browsing in general.