Usually social bookmarking is the first term which comes to mind when people ask about social media and tagging. Actually the first Web 2.0 application I used was del.icio.us and it is still a favourite. More than 1,900 bookmarked items are document that I have used it regularly and intensely. It is easy to use, stable, and fast. I am also using Yahoo Bookmarks which basically serves as a backup of del.icio.us, and Wink. I like Wink’s Collections feature a lot.
Though earlier this week I have signed up to Ma.gnolia. The reason has been rather unspectacular. I am a subscriber to Chris Messina’s blog and he regularly posts links he has saved at Ma.gnolia. Those links including thumbnails look pretty and I have got interested. Stupid, eh?
So is it any different to del.icio.us? Yep. First, it is more structured and visually appealing whereas del.icio.us (apart from the homepage) is just words. You can join groups and post bookmarks to them. There are hundreds of groups dealing with everything from OpenID to Mythology. Of course, it is possible to subscribe to the groups’ RSS feeds. If you want to keep up-to-date with a topic it is more convenient than subscribing to tags in del.icio.us. Well, you can suscribe to tags as well, of course. Users can also participate in discussion and add other users as contacts, though I haven’t done this yet.
I have probably just scratched the surface of Ma.gnolia considering I am using it just for a few days. But I like it a lot. It is emphasising the social in social bookmarking which helps making it more friendly and appealing. I probably won’t import all of my del.icio.us bookmarks but will start from scratch and using it from now on. Oh, I cannot conceal a negative aspect of Ma.gnolia: it is slow. Hopefully this will be improved someday.
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del.icio.us was also my first web2.0service. nowadays I use blinklist.com for onlinebookmarking. it rocks. has a lot of social features too. you can add ‘friends’ and you get a generic rss-feed for all items posted by them. pretty useful. it’s extension is a bit slow sometimes though.
the groupsfunction of magnolia sounds interesting. -
Blinklist sounds good, too. But I won’t try another bookmarking service. At least not yet.
Also I am wondering how many of those services will survive. Raw Sugar is gone and even German service Taggle was sold to Mr. Wong, Germany’s biggest service. -
taggle was never really big, was it? and raw sugar never really had unique features (tags into folders as only standalonefeature? come on!)
a handful will survive, I guess. Mainly because it will be a matter of taste. And people can’t be arsed to switch again and again, so once they are more or less happy with a service they’ll stay with it.
I’m not 100% happy with blinklist myself but I really can’t be arsed to try out another bookmarkingtool at this moment. that’s the same with you and many others I think. -
No, Taggle wasn’t big. I just mentioned it because I think crowding out will increase this year. I never had a look at Raw Sugar. Seems I didn’t miss much.
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Carsten thanks so much for writing up your experience with Ma.gnolia so far; a big welcome from everyone on the team. I noticed your comment about speed at the end and have to acknowledge it. We have been growing quite a lot, and the spammers never seem to stop trying to get their stuff in, and it does take a toll on the system sometimes. We take speed concerns very seriously (we use Ma.gnolia as well, after all) and much of our efforts go toward improving it. Let us know if things don’t improve for you.
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Ah spammers, the plague of our time. Well, speed seems to vary. It’s probably dependent on the number of people using Ma.gnolia. I will let you know if speed won’t improve here.
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