‘Amazon Buys Goodreads to Make Reading Experience More Social’ – ‘Mashable’

Seth Fiegerman says, “Amazon announced Thursday that it will acquire Goodreads, the popular social network for books, for an undisclosed sum.

Goodreads launched in 2007 and currently has more than 16 million members. The service lets users share and review books they’ve read or want to read, as well as to keep track of what their friends are reading.

In a statement, Amazon’s VP of Kindle Content, Russ Grandinetti, said the two companies will work together “to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike.” The acquisition should provide some useful reading data to Amazon and help the ecommerce giant create more of a social reading experience around its Kindle offerings, perhaps giving it a leg up on competition from Apple and Google”.