Slice launches social book network Bookshelf

Haven’t been able to lay your hands on Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ yet? Oh, never mind… with the Slice Bookshelf, you might be able to borrow it from your bestie living down the street.

Slice, the shopping app company that helps you manage your purchases, launched its second product today: Bookshelf — a web-based social book network that helps you discover and share books with friends.

Besides building your own virtual library with Bookshelf, you can share and discover reads; rate, comment on, and ask questions about content; and borrow and lend books.

“A great book stays with us long after we turn the last page, and the experience is made even better by sharing with friends,” said Scott Brady, chief executive and co-founder of Slice. “We built Bookshelf with social connections at the core, so recommendations come from the people you know and trust.”

You can get started by creating an account using Facebook Connect. The app has the ability to build a virtual library by pulling out relevant information pertaining to your book purchases or the books you liked from your email and Facebook accounts. You may also opt to import your books from Goodreads or add them one by one.

The growing popularity of Pinterest seems to have inspired the look and feel of “Book Feed,” the company’s very own version of newsfeed.

Bookshelf is similar to a social pinboard of books, Thad Hwang, head of product management at Slice told VentureBeat.

The visuals for books come from a combined catalogue of Bowker and Amazon. “We also have a direct integration with the Google Books API,” informed Hwang.

“Users can easily search and add books to their virtual bookshelves, whether it’s books they’ve already read or want to read. [They] can also create bookshelves that are customized by genre or theme and then easily share them with friends and followers,” he added.

The shopping app from Slice provides a way to organize and track purchases by pulling out information from electronic receipts buried in your email. While the team has not divulged its user numbers, it revealed that it has processed more than 75 million purchases worth over $2.4 billion to date.

Palo Alto-based Slice raised $9.4 million in Series A funding in May 2011. The round was led by DCM and Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from FLOODGATE, Innovation Endeavors Michael Birch, and Rick Thompson.

Image Credit: Slice