Facebook connects with Shelfari, Amazon.com

Shelfari, the social-networking site for bibliophiles, now enables Facebook members to rate, review and share books without leaving the site.

Unlike most Facebook applications built by independent developers, the new application was built by Shelfari, which received financing from Amazon.com in February. Some of the bibliographic and user-generated content on Shelfari is piped in from Amazon.

Facebook members can view their library on a virtual bookshelf, import books already added on Shelfari, and rate and review books and share those ratings and reviews automatically using Facebook personal newsfeeds.

The connection should boost activity on Shelfari. Facebook has grown tremendously over the past year after it began offering memberships to non-students. According to a report from Comscore, Facebook saw an 89 percent jump in unique visitors and a 143 percent increase in page views. Facebook had 26.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. during May 2007.