Linkmeister

About time this was recognized

I've plugged Library Thing half-a-dozen times here (put Library Thing into the Search box on the right), and now Business 2.0 has written about it.

Less than two years after it opened its doors to the public, LibraryThing's users have listed, tagged, or recommended more than 10 million works--a collection that, were it not virtual, would be the third-largest private library in the United States, behind those of Harvard and Yale.

In the process, LibraryThing has become a sort of anti-MySpace. Here, instead of people finding each other through shared friends, they connect through a shared love for Goethe or Grisham.

This quote is entirely accurate: "When I first went to LibraryThing, it took me about 20 minutes before I said, 'How soon can I give these people $25 for a lifetime membership?'" says Christopher Locke, coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto. "A person's library gives a characterization far beyond anything that anyone could ever say on MySpace."

I lasted two days before I forked over my cash, but I've had easily ten times that much fun with it.