I don't think so either, although I hope that we'll both be proven wrong. It would probably be a very good idea for current BL users to think about other options and to work on backing up (by hand, unfortunately) anything they really don't want to lose. In my case, I'm going to work on recreating my BL reading lists over at LibraryThing, although I hate that LibraryThing doesn't have the option of creating private lists.

I thought they were just the new owners of the first site, though, and not necessarily Booklikes.

That was my take as well FD; I could find nothing that indicated that Bauer bought BL as well as Okazjum.

Maybe. I haven't used Yahoo in ages, but there don't seem to be a lot of other options.

Well, any groups, forums, discussion boards, etc. that are free where we could at least keep up with each other until finding new homes if booklikes dies. Keep up plus relate experiences with potential new book communities as we find them.

Agreed. I'm trying very very hard not to get my knickers in a knot and wait for more information.

I agree so fingers crossed.

I'm still not convinced Bauer is the new owner. The sentence names them the new owner of Okazjum.pl, but names no owner for Booklikes.

We'll ultimately only know once they tell us.

However, do we even know whether Okazjum is BL's parent or its sister company (and in the latter case, that they're not both owned by the same mother company)? All I know, because I looked it up when I first moved here, is that "Okazjum.pl" is a different *website* created by the same people who also created BookLikes. Whoever is the creator of a given website doesn't tell you anything about the respective corporate ownership vehicles, though. They could both (directly or indirectly) be owned by the same corporation, or they could be owned by separate corporations founded by the same people -- anything is possible.

However, Bauer being a European media giant, they've obviously clued into the fact that social media is the way to go these days. And along those lines, BookLikes is at least as likely a candidate to gobble up as Okazjum.pl -- and if you can get both at the same time as they're connected by the people who created them (in whichever corporate structure that connection may find its impression), that strikes me as a scenario Bauer would very likely want to consider very seriously.

I can shed light on one thing: the venture capital firm, SpeedUp, has (or had, maybe, before the sale?) a 40% stake in BookLikes.

Nothing I found yesterday in all my searches ties Okasjum and BL together under a parent umbrella. They seem to be two separate entities. The comment Familiar Diversions found originally states that Okasjum sold in 2015, with BookLikes "in 2016" (really, that sentence is awful in its construction!!).

As I write this I'm goofing around on the SpeedUp group's site and I've just found that they were investors in Okazjum too, but they've listed it as "exited". But BookLikes is NOT listed as exited. for what that's worth...

Thanks for digging this up; yet more great detective work.

Venture capital companies are rarely in something for the long run; they invest in a company that looks promising to them and exit when they've gotten everything out of it (financially) that they expected to get, or that they think they could have gotten. So it makes sense that SpeedUp should have exited Okasjum at the time when it was sold (probably that was the time when both SpeedUp and Dawid / Joanna decided they'd taken Okasjum as far as it made sense for them).

As you noted, though, the fact that SpeedUp still listed as part owners of BookLikes is neither here nor there. Even if the site has been sold (which we don't know in the first place), they wouldn't be at liberty to disclose anything before the sale has been announced officially any more than any of the other parties to the deal. And if it hasn't been sold ... the total silence we're getting is even more inexplicable.

Libib lacks the social. But, it's a great place to backup book data from sites that let you export to a backup file. (*sigh* booklikes does not which always made me nervous but I was told Mnths ago they were working on that ...).

YouTube video tutorials for Libib at https://www.youtube.com/c/libib

Thanks for your reply! I was about to update my post with your tweet to Obsidian Blue.

You're back! *hugs* Also let this be a lesson: you go silent and we all collectively panic and assume the worst. So, no more silent treatment! ;)

Thank you very much for posting to put our minds at ease. The one thing that I saw posted again and again throughout the past few weeks is that we all love it here and don’t want BookLikes to go away.

I hope in the near future you’ll take some time to post about your future plans for the site, in terms of how you plan to grow and improve it. This is a great site and it shouldn’t be left to die.

Please keep in mind that when staff isn’t active and responsive on their own site, it really freaks people out.

Woot Woot !!!! :D This makes me so happy !

Adding my yay in hear. It's just nice to see someone from BL on this site at all. I love BL so, so much, I was really worried when you weren't talking to us :D

yeah, no more silent :)

That's wonderful news. :) Thanks for letting us know.

Maybe booklikes needs to make a blog post addressing rumors of shutdowns, buyouts, David not being CEO, etc.? Like we used to get with Thursday Candy. And in an effort to convince doubting members our reviews and book catalogs are safe here finally implement a backup/ export feature.

I love it here, mostly because of the social interactions; but, once I think staff are no longer investing time in a site, bugs go unaddressed, queries unanswered -- I'm afraid I do suspect a shutdown or ownership change and go looking for replacements.

I may pick the wrong next book site to use. Knowing features and platform aren't what I want yet seeing recent staff activity could make me pick it. (Yes, I know, brand new sites are always more communicative as are sites deliberately luring in members because of closings like Shelfari or train wrecks like goodreads censorship during banned books week 2013 -- not that naive.).

If something is up, hopefully booklikes will say something before Shelfarians now also losing Leafmarks decide to try it. It's a shame that Jacquie over on Leafmarks, if had been considering closing it or had lost interest, did get active briefly to handle some bugs with Shelfari imports because that made them feel it was a viable site (and even got my hopes back up where I was doing librarian edits on their books and trying to forget how silent staff had been).

All I can do is cross my fingers and hope that we're all still chatting on BL a year or more from now.

Me too.

Amen to that.