There was other big HMV Group news this week but it was probably drowned out by the apocalyptic noises from the business press about the entertainment retailer's future.

It recently amassed a 45% stake in aNobii, a social networking site for books that has been around since 2006 but is being pushed into the UK this year. Chief executive Matteo Berlucchi, who is behind the video streaming site Livestation, bought the site from its founder Greg Sung in recent months. Joining him is an impressive team including Simon Murdoch, who gave a boost to Amazon when he sold his Bookpages retail site to it back in 1998, as well as people involved in eBay, Reuters, and HMV Group c.e.o. Simon Fox, who is a non-executive director.

Users can add books to their profile's shelves and in a neat touch, scan barcodes with their iPhone or Android phones and read reviews from other users or add books to their library. This works quite well with me scanning Peter Mandelson's The Third Man, Simon Pegg's Nerd Do Well and John Le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor without any major problems. This is also infinitely less dull than keying in the titles of hundreds of books, which other book network sites raised the prospect of.

What Berlucchi has realised is the western world is so Facebook savvy, it's unlikely anyone will topple it, in the short term at least. So instead of going toe to toe with Zuckerberg, aNobii (Latin for bookworm, as you're wondering) will allow users to share books through Facebook as well as Twitter.

I spoke to Berlucchi yesterday and he confidently predicted the site will solve the problem that online book sites all seem to have: what should I read next? "If I know what I'm going to buy, I go to the big A[mazon]. There's very little competition because of their price focus. But what they don't help with is finding the book that will change your life. This is what people want and we think the solution is through the power of the social network."

He said the launch in the UK will match those of Last.Fm and Spotify, with a slow build towards what he hopes will be hundreds of thousands of users by the end of the year. The Last.Fm comparison is interesting. I have used it since 2007 (username is grimola if you want to add me) and find it a great resource for band recommendations based on what I like, telling me what gigs are going up or looking at what I have been listening to over the past six or 12 months (something I rather sadly find endlessly fascinating). You can easily see aNobii working the same way. As it gets used to my book library, it can recommend titles, author events and also show me what my friends are reading.

But one thing I haven't done through the site is buy anything directly through Last.Fm. Gig tickets are bought through a vendor and any music I buy is through iTunes, Rough Trade, or dare I say it, HMV. So how aNobii monetises the site will be an interesting thing to watch over the coming months. While Berlucchi is keeping schtum on who will be the eventual retail partner across print and digital, it is unlikely HMV paid for a 45% stake out of kindness.

It also could go part of the way to solving Waterstone's social networking conundrum, if the bookseller became aNobii's retailer of choice. Publishers privately criticise it for an undercooked digital offer. If the site takes off in the way Berlucchi is predicting, this could be a way for Waterstone's to help corner part of the digital market that is yet untapped: that of the social networker.