Funny that the Christian Science Monitor's Teresa Mendez looks at the ever-increasing number of book-related social networks just as I try to navigate my way through GoodReads after a friend invited me. I'm still working out the kinks but the site's creator, Otis Chandler, explains why the site has grown to 125,000 registered users who together have reviewed 1.8 million books. "When I want to know what books to read, I'd rather turn to a friend than any random person, bestseller list, or algorithm," he wrote earlier this year. "So I thought I'd build a website – a website where I could see my friends' bookshelves and learn about what they thought of all their books."

And now there are at least 30 such websites, with one of the more established social network brands, LibraryThing, forming an exclusive partnership with Random House. Next week, in addition to sending early review copies of books to the usual recipients – book critics, booksellers, even bloggers - Random House will send free copies of five new fiction titles to 95 LibraryThing members in exchange for short reviews. They'll ship another batch in July. Come October, LibraryThing anticipates opening its "Early Reviewers" program to other publishing houses. A half-dozen have expressed interest so far.

Just don't call the site a focus group. "We're not necessarily looking for them to reinforce what we already know – which is that the book is great," says Avideh Bashirrad, who works in the publisher's marketing department. "We're hoping they'll help us generate early word-of-mouth buzz for these books." Nor is it a replacement for traditional book reviews or even literary blogs, but Chandler believes such sites represent what readers really want right now. "The new generation doesn't want to read book reviews from people they don't know," he said. "They want to read book reviews from their friends."