“It's 2008 and I still use my browser's bookmarks functionality on a daily basis. Despite all the Web 2.0 rush and bubble, I still don't think there's a good bookmarking service/tool out there (private bookmarks are a must). What gives?”
I was doing the same thing until I started using delicious as a search tool. Finally realized how powerful it was, and have been using it since, but with the delicious FF plugin installed. - shaun mclane
Organizing bookmarks well is a must. I find making common searches or actions like "add to friendfeed" in folders is a great way. But yes, I still use Web 1.0 bookmarks. - Louis Gray
What features are you looking for, Aviv? Every service I've used (Del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Ma.gnolia, Simpy, etc) gives you the option to make private bookmarks. I can't imagine using bookmarks stored on my computer anymore, at the rate that I am having to rebuild them or the fact that I have one for work and one for personal stuff. Personally I use Diigo + Del.icio.us. - Lindsay Donaghe
Lindsay, well, I can go on and on about this. In no particular order: an ideal Bookmarking Tool would be able to fetch related comments from everywhere - from the post itself to FF & YC News, display content snippets when browsing the bookmarks, show me the domain of the link (come on, del.icio.us. Really? After 5 years?), know the different types of shared links (video, blog post, etc.), show more sources or links discussing the same item. There's so much more. ALL bookmarking services today suck, period. - Aviv
Bookmarking tools stopped innovating because they think it's all about sharing the links. It's so much more than that, and unfortunately they're all missing it. - Aviv
At the end of the day I think that bookmarking services today add little value to the end-user. Think about it - what is it that they do? So we can save a link to del.icio.us. Great. Why aren't they aggregating blog comments for me? Why can't I search the actual pages that I bookmarked? There's no follow up on the service's end. - Aviv
We all bookmark links to things we want to keep tabs on, right? So why can't the tools be a little proactive about it and notify me when new comments are posted? I want the service to let me know of hot discussions developing on reddit or FF about items that I made it a point to save for later. Today's bookmarking tools are, well, passive and generally LAZY. (yes, just like... my browser's bookmarks!) - Aviv
I suppose we have different goals for bookmarking. I would not want to use a bookmarking tool the way you suggest and have it bug me every time there's an update to a site. I don't expect bookmarks to be activity trackers. I look at them more like pointers on a bookshelf to info I might want/need to review again later or that I simply find interesting and want to share with other people or add my thoughts to. - Lindsay Donaghe
You should check out YackTrack if you want to see all the comment history around a url. Maybe your ideal tool would be a mashup between that and Del.icio.us piped to an RSS feed you can subscribe to. - Lindsay Donaghe
Well, it's obviously not supposed to "bug you". I guess what I'm looking for is some added-value. If I let a third-party service manage my bookmarks, the least they can do is provide basic utility functions. At the end of the day, I don't benefit from being able to click on "348 other people bookmarked this link" as much as I would if my favorite bookmarking service was able to let me know (again, in a non-intrusive manner) that a 100-comment thread popped up on Reddit last night. - Aviv
YackTrack is far from being a usable service at this stage, but it's a step in the right direction. Either way, the tracking capability is only one feature I'm looking for. There are plenty more :) My point is: bookmarking services stopped innovating sometime in 2005 and are almost as passive as my browser's bookmarking feature. - Aviv
I am right there with you, Aviv. I still use bookmarks 1.0 and am on a continuous hunt for the ideal solution. - Carla Thompson
@Aviv, what features would you need to make YackTrack a "usable" service? I know RSS feeds are a popular request, but I have a feeling you have different ideas. - Rob Diana
Rob, oh, well, there's a whole lot to be done there... For starters, it doesn't work. (btw, I'm not criticizing YT specifically.. obviously they just launched and will evolve). Give me a dash board where I can see all my tracked URLs. Extract comments from the original post. Tell me which comments are new each time I log on. Recommend content based on commenters in discussions that I care about. Highlight comments from users I'm subscribed ("friends") to across the different sites)... - Aviv
And much more... I'll save it for some other time ;) - Aviv
Shey, well, ideally it'd be amazing to search the actual content of links that you bookmark (ie. blog post, its comments). But I don't expect much from a site such as del.icio.us - that until today doesn't let users preview domains of bookmarked links. That alone equals to thousands of hours wasted on that site. - Aviv
Sorry, I deleted my comment by accident -- I had said that I don't really need search because I use very descriptive tags, but we may be talking about search for different purposes - Shey
I've been using the delicious toolbars for FF (and as of yesterday, IE); bookmarks that I want private, I mark private - acedanger via twhirl
I see your point. But are 1.0 Bookmarks that much better than 2.0? - Shey
I used to forget to backup bookmarks. I started using del.icio.us during a backup. Now I don't loose my bookmarks anymore. - funkyboy
It's amazing to me that the Web 2.0 hype brought us sites such as RateMyCat.com and ShouldIWearThisShirtToProm.com - all with full-blown tagging capability, of course - but we've yet to see innovative bookmarking alternatives to rival del.icio.us' inefficient offering. - Aviv
@Aviv, well some of that will be coming eventually. Registration and tracking of urls is high on my list of things. New comments since last logon is a good request and I had not thought about that one. If you have any questions or issues on how it works or doesn't, just send an email to feedback at yacktrack.com. I am open to suggestions, and I have seen some usages that I did not think of. Nobody's perfect :) - Rob Diana
I have now started living in Diiigo. Between private, public, listings, search, groups, tagging (of course) and webslides, I have found it to be the best out there for now and it overtook my in browser bookmarks - Chris
Oh Rob, didn't realize it was yours :) Didn't mean to drag it into my rant thread, but it's all brainstorming I guess! - Aviv
@Aviv, well, everyone is on friendfeed. I love the brainstorming as it tends to yield good ideas, like "new comments" that you had mentioned. Great idea and probably simple. I just hadn't thought of it yet. - Rob Diana
I'm pro social bookmarking for two reasons. 1 - where there is a browser there is my bookmarks. 2 - every time I save something people see my name (killing two birds with one stone) - Julian Baldwin
@aviv why do you think delicious' offering is inefficient? - acedanger
To me, bookmarks are static reference resources, things I may have to revisit at a later date, or something I may need to remember. Sites I "like" are handled with RSS. I currently use Google Bookmarks for my needs, and I'm hoping to see a little more attention for that app one day with maybe some integration into gReader or Google Desktop. - Vince DeGeorge
I think at some point we all forgot that bookmarking stuff doesn't necessarily mean sharing it, which is why I think del.icio.us and its clones failed on innovating and delivering basic functionalities, namely conversation tracking and recommendations that are not necessarily based on friends sharing the same stuff (ie. I bookmark a ReadWriteWeb.com article about semantic web - well, that's when I want my bookmarking service to ask me if I read another Alex Iskold semantic web piece from last month) - Aviv
acedanger, click "Show 25 more comments" ;) - Aviv
I'll use web 1.0 bookmarks until someone can find a way to allow me to do Command + D to bookmark to whatever service you want me to use. In Safari. None of this Firefox extension nonsense. - Mark Trapp
Vince, exactly - we all got used to PASSIVE bookmarks. Sometimes I'm too lazy to re-visit older bookmarks - but if my favorite bookmarking service listed links along with "25 new blog comments, 11 FriendFeed threads (in which 6 friends participated)" I might be more inclined to go back to it. - Aviv
Mark, you can do it with keyboard shortcuts & AppleScript, no? Edit: yeah, you should be able to, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible - Aviv
@Aviv, you might want to give Twine a try. I believe it would fit your requirements. No I am not affiliated with Twine in any way :) - Rob Diana
Rob, yeah, twine is okay, but really an overkill for what I'm looking for (plus it doesn't offer any conversation tracking, which I think is the real killer feature of the next del.icio.us) - Aviv
del.icio.us ain't perfect, but once it replaced my browser bookmarks I never looked back and no more rely on local copies, signed - Dobromir Hadzhiev
I prefer keeping a massive link of bookmarks online, storing 50-100 or so important bookmarks on Google Bookmarks and maybe 25 convenient bookmarks customized per local machine I use. - Mike Reynolds
i have set up my personal toolbar with all the features and functionality i need per project i am working on hence any service with just bookmarks is seriously increasing my time needed to work efficiently. search is not done properly by most bookmark systems (as in appropriate for 2008) and is it much easier to still have local access to them. bookmarks first and formost are for me myself and i. - Nicole Simon
I used to use online bookmarking, but now that I've switched to FF3, it's just too easy to hit that star at the top - Daniel E. Renfer via twhirl
I have a distributed system. Some to Twine based on the twines I belong to. Most to Ma.gnolia. Very rare to use my desktop bookmarking at all. - Cyndy
