Alternatives to del.icio.us?
Friday, 09 December 2005So, I just start getting used to bookmarking with del.icio.us when Yahoo! go and buy them out. I realise that a popular site like del.icio.us will consume tons of expensive bandwidth, so this might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it can’t be too long before we start seeing the first ads appearing on at least some of the pages. How long will it be before we have interstitials between bookmarks and the intended destinations?
Just in case things go badly I’m looking for recommendations for other good (and popular) social bookmarking sites. Which site(s) other than del.ico.us do you use?
I'd give a bit more credit to Yahoo- they've not
Scott Fegette | Saturday, 10 December 2005 | 1:08 amI’d give a bit more credit to Yahoo- they’ve not turned Flickr into an ad network yet, but have had plenty of time to do so. Personally, I see things getting better for del.icio.us as a result of this deal, there’ve been a lot of weird server outages and glitches lately on the service, at least for me. And for those of us who rely on del.icio.us being up and live to have access to our favorites/bookmarks, the additional funding from Yahoo may help to improve their uptime, IMHO…
I got into Furl around the same time del.icio.us came
Kevin Hoyt | Saturday, 10 December 2005 | 2:32 amI got into Furl around the same time del.icio.us came around (or so I’m guessing). Furl does most of what del.icio.us does, but takes it one step further in some areas. For example, Furl takes the page you just bookmarked (and tagged, etc.) and stores the text. This means that more than just the tags are searchable, but all the content of the pages you’ve bookmarked as well (is that redundant?).
My only beef with Furl right now is their Firefox toolbar plug-in (?) hasn’t been rev-ed for Firefox 1.5. They still have a magic bookmark thing though that works great. Check ‘em out!
I started using del.icio.us less than a week ago and
Michael Prescott | Saturday, 10 December 2005 | 4:35 amI started using del.icio.us less than a week ago and have no grudges against Yahoo, except that deal they struck with Macromedia a while back, which caused my customers to get the Yahoo toolbar when they updated their Flash player.
However, I do dislike advertisements. I like pure, refined content. Yet, I understand that when a single business centralizes a service they carry a heavy, expensive burden and must cover that expense. Plus, that business might actually want to be VERY profitable. But, from the user perspective any thing more or less than the service or product they want is undesirable.
Also, I think search engines and other social bookmarking services gather, accumulate, and extrapolate too much information about their users. Other than spam, targeted advertisements, and identity theft; we haven’t seen too many unintended consequences, but that doesn’t mean we won’t as more and more data is gathered, traded, and sold.
Anyhow, what I’m wanting is a decentralized search engine and decentralized social bookmarking. I think, the burden of searching and indexing can be spread out to many. No one entity gathers information about users, and cannot exercise their commercial interest which tend to dilute the quality of the service.
I haven’t found or created a solution yet, but I’m interested and researching.
Scott: I agree that this might be a very good
Steve | Saturday, 10 December 2005 | 12:11 pmScott: I agree that this might be a very good thing for the availability of del.icio.us. There’s nothing worse than relying on a service and for that service to go missing for 10 minutes at a time because it’s become a victim of its own success. Time will tell, but the addition of ads is inevitable unless they plan on charging for the sevice.
Kevin: Thank you for the suggestion. I think I’d heard furl being mentioned before so I’ll definitely check it out. Part of me wonders though how log it’ll be before Google and Microsoft snap up the remaining popular social bookmarking sites. From your description, Furl sounds like it’s right up Google’s street.
Micheal: All businesses in the end are there to make a profit. I don’t blame the del.iciou.us developers for taking up the offer. Sure as hell if I was approached by any big business with a blank cheque I’d have to think of my family first and idealism would come a distant second. Let me know if you find what you’re looking for.
I would recomend Spurl. It's the best social bookmarkings service
børge | Friday, 30 December 2005 | 12:42 amI would recomend Spurl. It’s the best social bookmarkings service out there!
Somebody recommended to me a service called BlinkList, it seems
Jamie | Sunday, 08 January 2006 | 8:17 pmSomebody recommended to me a service called BlinkList, it seems to work very much like del.icio.us and has a fair amount of users. Howerver, I haven’t used it myself so cannot vouch for it’s worth.
I've just started trying out simpy.com, so far it looks
Dan | Tuesday, 17 January 2006 | 2:36 pmI’ve just started trying out simpy.com, so far it looks good. Some features delicious doesn’t have, like public/private bookmarks, and better search imo.
The interface looks a bit ‘busy’ though, not as clean as delicious.
I cam across your site looking for del.icio.us alternatives.
Jacob | Monday, 14 April 2008 | 7:48 pmI cam across your site looking for del.icio.us alternatives. I’m hearing that the Microsoft buyout of Yahoo is imminent, and decided to start looking for alternatives for the same reasons you were looking for alternatives when Yahoo bought del.icio.us.
Interesting though, that your concerns back in the day about advertising and the such haven’t yet come true.