Bookmarks Roundup
Monday, January 15th 2007 | Ismael Ghalimi
Here is the first edition of our Weekly Office 2.0 Roundup. Today, we will review 27 bookmarking applications, from BlinkList to Zurpy. We will identify some unique features that might help your own selection process, and you will get a chance to cast your vote for the best online bookmarking application.
With the help of many contributors, we completed the Bookmarks section of the Office 2.0 Database. We also got some ideas from the Social Bookmarking Galore article published by Brian Benzinger at Solution Watch. Even though it’s almost a year and a half old, it’s content it still very relevant today.
Functionality
From a functionality standpoint, most online bookmarking applications share a common set of features. They allow you to bookmark sites, add tags and comments to your bookmarks, and share them with selected friends. Most applications also allow you to publish and syndicate your bookmarks, while about half let you create link rolls on your blog or website through JavaScript badges. More than two thirds of the applications we reviewed allow you to import your existing bookmark files, and when then do they also make it easy to export your bookmarks to another application, which is nice. A little bit more than half provide some kind of API, but very few offer custom branding, domains, or subdomains, making it a personal application rather than something that could be used within a group. For the later, you will want to consider Connectbeam — the only enterprise bookmarking solution we reviewed, or a Group Manager. Last but not least, most of the applications that made it into our Top 10 list provide buttons that can be added to the most popular Web browsers in order to quickly create a new bookmark for a site.
Ease of Migration
Migrating from an offline bookmarking tool like the ones provided by most Web browsers to an online bookmarking application might be one of the easiest things to do. As indicated earlier, most applications let you import a bookmark file, usually using plain old HTML as data format. The only thing to keep in mind is that most online bookmarking applications rely on tags rather than folders to organize your bookmarks, therefore you might have to manually tag all your bookmarks after import if you want them to be properly organized. Also, because most applications also let you export your bookmark files using HTML, or the incresingly popular OPML format, moving from one application to another and performing regular backups should be fairly easy.
Price
At the exception of Connectbeam, which is a true enterprise bookmarking solution, and Furl, which seems to require a paid subscription in order to get access to some features, all the applications we reviewed are entirely free. As a result, the good news is that you won’t have to open up your wallet, and the bad news is that you will want to be extra careful in selecting your provider, for it might not be around for very long. Advertising seems to be the only working business model in this area, and it’s not clear to me that it’s a sustainable one.
Top 10 Players
Most online bookmarking applications do not make use of HTTPS, therefore the Alexa ranking is not as bad as it would be if they were. According to this ranking, we can extrapolate a Top 10 list of players in the space, which is corroborated by the fact that all members of this list show a Google PageRank of 6 or more, on a scale of 0 to 10. Netvouz (Alexa Rank: 22,985) did not make it into the Top 10, but shows a Google PageRank of 7, which makes them slightly more credible than several others Top 10 contenders that only get a Google PageRank of 6. If we combine del.icio.us and Yahoo! My Web into a single Yahoo! entry, we get the following results:
- 1. Yahoo! del.icio.us (Alexa Rank: 1)
- 2. Google Bookmarks (Alexa Rank: 3)
- 3. Furl (Alexa Rank: 2,221)
- 4. BlinkList (Alexa Rank: 2,764)
- 5. Clipmarks (Alexa Rank: 5,277)
- 6. BlogMarks (Alexa Rank: 5,933)
- 7. ma.gnolia (Alexa Rank: 6,235)
- 8. Spurl (Alexa Rank: 8,654)
- 9. Simpy (Alexa Rank: 10,155)
- 10. Shadows (Alexa Rank: 17,792)
Editor’s note: Alexa only ranks primary domains, not subdomains. Therefore, traffic generated by Google Bookmarks is lost among the traffic generated by all applications provided by Google. As a result, there is no easy way of evaluating how successful this application really is. The same is true for Yahoo! My Web, but del.icio.us ranks 120 on Alexa on its own, first among pure bookmarking sites. For this reason, the excellent del.icio.us gets the top spot on our list.
Quick Reviews
There are too many entries in our database to review them one by one, so instead I will provide quick reviews for the ones that are particularly interesting, either because they have massive appeal, or because they provide some unique features. And if you’re passionate about any online bookmarking application, tell us about it by adding a comment to this post.
BlogMarks: this application was one of the first to support visual bookmarks that display a thumbnail preview of any bookmarked site. This feature is now supported by more popular applications like del.icio.us, yet BlogMarks still provides one of the most streamlined user interfaces out there.
Connectbeam: if you believe that a social bookmarking tool should be a critical piece of your knowledge management infrastructure, much like a blogging server or a wiki, you should definitely take a look at this application. Connectbeam is available both as a service and as an appliance that you can deploy on premise, and provides the most complete set of features of all the applications we reviewed. It’s also the only one to charge for them, so it should be considered as an enterprise solution rather than a personal tool.
del.icio.us: as Brian mentioned in his article, this is the godfather of social bookmarking, and the application acquired by Yahoo! a little bit more than a year ago remains one of the best out there. It also has the most complete set of APIs, badges, and import/export capabilities, as well as the largest number of mashups with other applications.
Diigo: sharing and publishing bookmarks with tags and little comments attached to them is nice, but providing detailed annotations directly onto Web pages is even nicer, and Diigo is definitely leading the pack there. Annotations used to require the use of a dedicated plugin with initial releases of the application, but the company listened to persistent requests from users (including myself), and developed a plugin-free version as well. Definitely worth checking if you consider your bookmarking tool as a real productivity application.
ma.gnolia: I liked this application at first sight for its refined user interface. Over time, it grew into one of the most sophisticated ones, adding features like private bookmarks (also supported by Simpy) and caching. You cannot go wrong with it.
scuttle: this one is not as sophisticated as most of the applications that made it into our Top 10 list, but it’s the only one that is available as an Open Source piece of software that you can install on your own server. The project has been used by many other niche players, such as de.lirio.us, which seems to have been hijacked by spammers. Consider yourself warned.
Simpy: this last one is a personal project developed by Otis Gospodnetic, but it’s also one of the most feature rich applications out there. It was the first to be internationalized — currently available in English, French, Italian, German, Korean, Russian, soon Chinese (Simplified). It also supports notes with full-text search, as well as watchlists and watchlist filters, allowing you to add people and their bookmarks to a watchlist, much like you would subscribe to a blog’s feed.
Personal Favorite
The quest for the perfect bookmarking tool kept me busy for quite some time last year, and I went from del.icio.us, to Simpy, then ma.gnolia , only to come back to del.icio.us in the end. Of all the online bookmarking applications I have used, del.icio.us has the most effective user interface, and the largest community, making your bookmarks even more valuable.
Best Online Bookmarking Application
Now that we know what’s out there, it’s time for a vote:
Note: if you cannot see the voting form, please follow this link.
Final results will be announced next week as an update to this post. In the meantime, please help me build next week’s roundup on Calendars. You can use this form courtesy of Wufoo for suggesting new applications, or providing additional information about existing ones. I would also welcome ideas for domain-specific criteria that could be used for evaluating the players on our list.
See you next week!
Update 2007-01-16: Digg was removed from the list.
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ismael,
This is a great writeup. You definitely did your homework here! Thanks very much for including Ma.gnolia in your review, and for the warm words for our growing little garden. We know that we’re not for everyone, and appreciate you giving us a try.
Ismael,
Thanks for the review — and for the kind words about Connectbeam. We do think that social bookmarking, tagging, and social bookmarking around information are essential parts of the enterprise IT stack in the 21st century.
We also think that integration with enterprise search (e.g. Google Search Appliance, etc.), LDAP or Active Directory, and document management are essential. We have the first two, and will have the last one some time soon.
You are right that Connectbeam is focused on the enterprise — but, hey, if any groups of bloggers or other small organizations are interested in using it, just email me. We’ll work something out for you!
BlinkList!
Even though you mentioned it in the summary, but didn’t actually review it.
Great interface, responsive to user feedback, actively developed, free.
Thank goodness for Ismael!
The one thing I use the Internet 90% of the time for is to find information. The tricky thing is bookmarking, using up to three different machines, each with two browsers.
I started to use Ma.gnolia when you introduced it to me Ismael. I do like it, but I’m still not making good use of it. Like most things, it takes some time investment to get familiar with, and to get it into one’s personal mainstream usage. I like the social aspect, finding links that others have found, saving me time on Google trying to locate some item of information. But you get very absorbed, and spend too much time in such a knowledge-rich environment!
Your review looks excellent, and I will try out some more. It’s just scary the thought of going through 10 years worth of links to see if they all work or are still relevant! It would be nice if the browser listed the ones that were not accessible for a few weeks!
Cheers
-Bob
Nice roundup Ismael.
Here are a few more bits about Simpy that I think are worth noting:
- First to have private bookmarks, as far as I know.
- First to have Groups, as far as I know.
- Like BlogMarks, has support for thumbnail previews via a browser plugin.
- First to be internationalized — currently available in English, French, Italian, German, Korean, Russian, soon Chinese (Simplified), and a few other languages.
- Simpy has Notes (with tags and full-text search), not just bookmarks, something many other services don’t have.
- Simpy has very powerful Watchlists and Watchlist Filters, also something that most other services do not have — adding people and their bookmarks to a Watchlist is the equivalent of subscribing to a blog’s feed.
A bit about other services:
- Del.icio.us is far ahead because of the first mover advantage plus, like you, so many people just can’t leave it. Let go, Luke, let go… I’m always amazed at how slow del.icio.us development is. There is a whole team of people working on it, yet they release new stuff so rarely… Why? Bureaucracy?
- De.lirio.us is covered with spam, but its real/original users have migrated to Simpy a while back (see Simpy’s blog).
- Jots is covered with spam and really no more, from what I can tell.
- LookLater was truly live for only a few months, from what I know, and is no longer maintained.
- Raw Sugar is kind of no more, and its users, too, are going to Simpy (a recent announcement is on Simpy’s blog).
- Shadows is pretty much abandoned.
- Spurl is on auto-pilot, no updates.
- Most of the 10 services you mentioned are full-blown companies. I think only Simpy and possibly BlogMarks are not official businesses. Concretely, Simpy is a side project of mine.
Also, nice icons there!
If you have a moment, please add Simpy. Here is the HTML snippet.
[…] Original post by Ismael Ghalimi and posted by Mark Bean […]
Otis,
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I added a quick review of Simpy, included the Simpy icon to my set of bookmarking icons, and removed Digg from the list. I agree with you, it does not really qualify.
Also, you might want to take a look at the features suggested by Bob.
Take care!
-Ismael
Ismael,
That was an interesting writeup. You covered a number of sites, and offered useful capsule summaries. I’ve looked over many of the sites you mention, and used del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, and Diigo. They are all good sites for bookmarking. But I think you overlooked a few points about Diigo that make it different from, and far superior to, any of the other sites.
1. As well as the ability to highlight and add sticky notes to web pages, you can collect the annotations from any set of pages (say, those tagged web-2.0-services) into a single source, with original URLs noted, to simplify your research.
2: The Diigo toolbar allows you to place all the search tools you might want, grouped by purpose, in a single button, so you can easily use multiple search tools for extensive research. The integration of this with bookmarking and annotation capabilities makes Diigo the most full-featured, capable research tool available.
Diigo has other abilities; too many to list here. Overall, Diigo will save anyone who spends much time doing research on the Internet time and effort. True, you need to spend a bit of time learning all the features so you can incorporate them into your work habits, but the effort will pay off many times over.
Overall, Diigo is the one service I find I cannot live without. There are other tools out there that do a nice job of this or that, and I use some of them. But Diigo is the only one I depend on throughout the day and could not live without.
Ramon,
Thanks for sharing your experience with Diigo. Much appreciated!
Best regards
-Ismael
How many users would like a del.icio.us++ where they can not only bookmark the URL, but also highlight specific parts of the page? Personally, I can’t live without highlighting: it helps me re-read the page, or realize that I’ve seen it before.
-Laurent
I have to agree with Ramon and the other Diigo users who left a comment here. In my opinion, nothing comes close to Diigo feature-wise.
Like many others, I use del.icio.us regularly, and have not been sufficiently motivated to explore other applications. Why not? Simply because del.icio.us is “good enough” for my needs. Actually, it’s better than this would imply — it’s one of the few Web-based applications that provides a true productivity gain for me.
Now, for a productivity drain rather than gain — but one I find useful. It may seem irrelevant, but bear with me, for it does eventually touch on the topic of bookmarking. Give the Stumbleupon Firefox plugin a try.
It is a neat piece of software where you register your interests, and then just hit the Stumble button. It delivers a random page from the Web which matches your tastes. You can then rate it (like it/dislike it), which (a) helps refine searches/delivery of releant pages and (b) helps you identify like-minded “stumblers” with whom you can share pages found. Of course, there is a lot of dross on the Web, but generally the hits have been good — serendipity in action.
Finally — and this is where this diversion is relevant, it keeps track of the pages you have visited and given a “thumbs up” rating, giving you a form of bookmarking. And no, I don’t have any vested interests in it, but yes, it is free (as in it costs nothing).
My comment is mostly for serious business use — mostly saving and sharing research. Diigo is already a great personal tool. I have tried several, and found that Onfolio was the best for my needs (until it was bought by the Evil Empire and emasculated). However, I am already finding Diigo to be better than Onfolio was at its best.
I am anxiously awaiting the groups feature of Diigo. If it works as advertised, it will make Diigo a killer application for my company. It is already our personal research bookmarker. With groups, it will become a workgroup bookmarker, with the ability to collaborate in creating a bookmark set for each project. It promises to also give us flexible group definitions to support multiple, overlapping workgroups.
Since our usage is commercial, we also want privacy. The “social” nature of some sites can be a positive disadvantage for users like ours. We would also prefer a paid service; I trust a service that has a fee-based business model more than I trust a supplier that is making money by indirect means. Also, I abhor intrusive advertising and cross linking.
Having sung the praises of Diigo for our serious business application, I should add that we also use it for personal, more trivial purposes. Like sharing gift ideas, or discussing new gadgets. We used to use a private (TypePad) group blog for this, but since getting Diigo, the blog has fallen into disuse, and we tend to Diigo-annotated pages instead — note that Diigo has now become a transitive verb, like Tivo.
-Keith
Ramon, Oliver, Keith,
Reading through your comments, it seems to me that Diigo is getting close to becoming a full fledged enterprise bookmarking tool in its own right. That’s pretty good news to me, for I hate having only one player in any category I cover. Let’s see how it compares to Connectbeam and the upcoming Cogenz down the road.
Best regards
-Ismael
Keith,
We’d like to welcome you to try Connectbeam. I would personally be very interested in hearing your feedback.
Keith,
I’ll join Puneet in sending out invitations, but mine will be for Simpy and its Groups feature. Do Simpy Groups provide you with that workgroup functionality you are waiting for from Diigo? Have you checked out Simpy’s Watchlist and, more importantly (IMHO), Watchlist Filters? Think of them as saved searches that filter out uninteresting stuff, and keep the stuff you are interested by. I’d love to get some feedback, if you have a few spare minutes.
And by the way, you can also play around with Simpy without creating an account, just use the demo account. It’s read-only, so you won’t be able to create Groups, but it should give you an idea about what’s available.
Hi Ismael!
First, there is a rather significant and little known entry that I believe was omitted. Surprisingly, it is EarthLink. I tried the service and liked it very much, but page refreshes took forever when selecting my different tags, and I quickly gave up on it and returned to del.icio.us. That was when it first came out, perhaps it has improved since then. Otherwise I actually liked it better than del.icio.us (at least at that time).
I’ve given quick runs of a number of services, and have stuck with del.icio.us. Too many of the other services do not seem to provide a condensed list view, and the last thing I want is only see 20 bookmarks on a page with long descriptions next to each bookmark, when all I want to do is quickly surf.
But now that del.icio.us has very powerful integration with Firefox, it’s a no-brainer for me. I strongly recommend that anyone that is not using the more powerful Firefox extension checks it out. It offers completely transparent integration right into the browser, and synchronizes across browsers. I do not think I have even visited the del.icio.us site in months.
[…] Last but not least: you still have 48 hours to vote for the best online bookmarking application, and I need some help for completing the Office 2.0 Database for the upcoming Office 2.0 Roundup on Calendars. In return, I’ll give you a brand new design for the blog, very soon. […]
Hi there,
How come you did not take a closer look at BlinkList? We are ranked above most of the players that you looked at, and are actively developing the platform all the time. I would love to hear your thoughts if you get a chance to check it out.
-Mike
Mike,
Lack of time, mostly.
I’ll take a closer look.
Best regards
-Ismael
[…] Price At the exception of Epointment, which is presented as an enterprise calendaring solution, and Trumba, which is more akin to an event management application, all the applications we reviewed are entirely free. As a result, the good news is that you won’t have to open up your wallet, and the bad news is that you will want to be extra careful in selecting your provider, for it might not be around for very long. Same as for bookmarking applications, advertising seems to be the only working business model in this area, and it’s not clear to me that it’s a sustainable one. I personally believe that synchronization with mobile devices could be marketed as an advanced features, and sold through subscriptions to individual users and small business groups. […]
Bob,
dead.licious version 1.2 was just released today, with support for Ma.gnolia collections, so if you’re on a Mac and want to check for dead bookmarks, you can find it at macupdate.com.
[…] Eg. at the moment IT|Redux has a series of posts on Office2.0, the 1st was on bookmarks, the 2nd was on calendars, the 3rd was on contact managers, the 4th was on CRM, and so on. […]
[…] 1. del.icio.us (18 votes out of 60) [Roundup] […]
Just wanted to share research and analysis on Social Bookmarking Service Providers. It is based on their Google & Alexa ranking. Read more here.
Great post.
Since I discovered Diigo, I’ve used it with nearly every page that I’ve visited, and recommended it to most of my friends. Contrary to all the other social bookmarking services, with Diigo, the focus is on the information, not the URL. At the same time, it doesn’t disconnect the information from its source. You can go back to any of the highlights you’ve saved, and view them in the original context. I use it to save anything, from short sentences to inspiring paragraphs, all the way to complete articles. And I don’t need to worry about the page changing, or the website going down. Diigo saves it all for me. As others noted, it serves as both a business tool and a personal tool. You are welcome to enjoy all the information I’ve collected, and to collaborate with me there.
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
Leave a Comment