Thanks to a new partnership between the social networking sites Shelfari and Facebook, Facebook users will soon be able to include "virtual bookshelves" on their home pages and then tap into the literary discussions taking place on Shelfari. As the press release announcing the collaboration puts it, "The Shelfari application is unique because it not only enables Facebook members to quickly share their reading lists but it also provides an avenue of exploration via the Shelfari site which is deeper than what can be provided by an independent third party developer whose applications are disconnected from a larger, vertically-oriented community."

When you remember that Amazon.com has a good-sized stake in Shelfari, the long-term consequences of this arrangement could get very, very interesting...