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Googling for more on social bookmarking sites, I found this array of icons, which includes a few sites which are new to me (array source).

Some are clearly derivative—compare Simpy and Reddit to De.lirio.us and the original. Some aren’t really social bookmarking sites but Slashdot-style weblogs. Again, I welcome any comments from experienced users of these services. As Dan said, Furl’s “wayback machine” aspect seems useful, and I may try them out. However, I think their privacy policy (doubtless from parent company LookSmart) leaves a lot to be desired. I may just write a little script to marry wget and the RSS feed from my del.icio.us.

Thursday I received a Ma.gnolia account and I’ve spent a few hours using the site since then. Wisely, they’ve included a few ways to import bookmarks, from both del.icio.us and bookmark files. They hit standard features (tag lists or clouds, RSS feeds, bookmarklets, etc) and add some new things, primarily the ability to add other users as “contacts,” and to start or join “groups” which organize users into moderated communities like photography, barbeque or programming. They also add a few little niceties, like a short URL, which for my WIU bookmark is http://ma.gnolia.com/bookmarks/clifathu. (The resemblance to “Cthulu” here warms my heart!)

However, some points of the UI are a little too flashy; I’ve confused the “delete link” and “send to group” buttons a few times. (OTOH, the resulting deletion confirmation message is very well presented!) Overall, after wrapping my head around del.icio.us and thinking a lot about how I use it, the Ma.gnolia system seems overcomplicated. There are little differences to learn, like having to separate tags with commas, and being able to include spaces in tags. I won’t use some features not in del.icio.us, like the link rating system. Like iPhoto or iTunes, you can give a link up to five stars, and the rating is applied speedily. However, since I’ve achieved the same effect using tags, by adding “wrong,” “frequent,” or “super,” to bookmarks, I don’t see a huge advantage to separating ratings and the tagging system. (Tags like “***” or “5*” would also work.)

I hasten to add this is by no means a dismissal of Ma.gnolia. I’m still learning. They are still in beta, and they seem to lack the critical mass of users which other social bookmarking sites already have. It’s also true that in many ways, these sites are philosophically different; Ma.gnolia solves the “Google noise problem” with editorial management, where del.icio.us solves it, as Clay Shirky observed, by aggregation. That’s why I don’t think del.icio.us will ever have top members, Kristen’s suggestion; for them, the crowd is more important.

Update 2/13: Ma.gnolia is almost out of beta; I’ve updated the URLs accordingly.

Posted Saturday, February 11th, 2006 at 5:16 pm under Nerdliness. Follow responses with the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.