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HarperCollins is closing its BookArmy social networking site later this month, blaming poor advertising and competition from similar sites.
The site will close down on 21st December. It formally launched in March 2009 offering users the opportunity to discuss and review titles, get recommendations according to reading tastes and sharing books with others.
In an email to members today [9th December], the BookArmy team said: "The decision has been made to close the site, after facing strong competition from similar sites and fewer advertising opportunities in such a tough economic climate."
A HarperCollins spokesperson said there would be no redundancies with staff transferring to work on its unpublished author site authonomy.com. She said: "Bookarmy was a great experiment and we have learned a huge amount from it which we are chanelling into other exciting digital projects, principally authonomy.com." BookArmy has offered users an export feature to transfer their book lists to other book social networking sites such as Library Thing, Shelfari or GoodReads.