LibraryThing is a social catalogingweb application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by individuals, authors, libraries and publishers.
Based in Portland, Maine,[2] LibraryThing was developed by Tim Spalding and went live on August 29, 2005. As of April 2013 it has over 1,650,000 users and more than 80 million books catalogued.[3]
LibraryThing is majority owned by founder Tim Spalding.[9] Online bookseller AbeBooks (now owned by Amazon) bought a 40% share in LibraryThing in May 2006 for an undisclosed sum.[10] In January 2009, Cambridge Information Group acquired a minority stake in the company, and their subsidiary Bowker became the official distributor to libraries.[9]
At the end of June 2006, LibraryThing was subject to the Slashdot effect from a Wall Street Journal article.[11] The site's developers added servers to compensate for the increased traffic. In December of the same year, the site received yet more attention from Slashdot over its UnSuggester feature, which draws suggestions from books least likely to appear in the same catalog as a given book.[12]
10,085 (April 2013[update])[1]
