Congrats to Josh Hug and the gang at Shelfari for joining the Amazon.com family. I was an early angel investor in Shelfari and have been a long time avid user of the service. Amazon was an investor in the first round and the two companies fit naturally together.
I invested in three vertical social networks in 2006 – Shelfari (books), Dogster (dogs and cats), and Enthusiast Group (sports). So far I have one win (Shelfari) and one loss (Enthusiast Group). Dogster is doing great and looks like it’ll be a nice winner also. I made these as small angel investments to learn about the dynamics around vertical social networks. I’ve learned a bunch from Josh and from Ted Rheingold at Dogster. It also looks like I’ll have a nice "aggregate financial outcome" for my investments in this area.
Well done Shelfari!