Del.icio.us:

Similar story in case of Blinklist and Simpy.

Seems social bookmarking is out of fashion lately. Oh, and it seems Philipp Keller has already written about it. So we are in trough of disillusionment stage now. And I’m not even ashamed of what I wrote on “Peak of inflated expectations”, just still amazed how did I manage to write such a long review of Blinklist. And Simpy review was supposed to be even longer, and I even had a nice pyramid diagram of the bookmarking phenomenon, but I never got to finish the article.

Anyway, Philipp’s identification of hype stage would match my case, too, since I don’t use del.icio.us anymore. Actually I didn’t bother to reinstall the plugin after swapping the laptop. And interacting with web interface is slow and you have to navigate the pages and wait for them too load… makes me rather stick to the messy bookmarks menu in Firefox.

But that gives me some idea about the next hype stage, “slope of enlightenment”. Integrate bookmarking seamlessly into browser (not only tagging, but also browsing and searching) and it will finally work as it should, and I will use it again.

Blink, a social bookmarking site, had the idea and the money to become what del.icio.us is now – back in 1999. Yet, they missed the opportunity.

Some observations after reading:

• Knowing what works today, it’s easy to forget that there had been hundred of ways to do it wrong
• Particular details can drag the implementation off the right course, even if the idea in general is right on target

The comments to the article give some more reasons for the final outcome, including lack of development focus and too early timing for the social bookmarking idea to gain foothold (though it seems that Blink managed to acquire more clients that del.icio.us has now).

The first impression upon hearing the news this morning – things are moving really fast for these guys. Close second would be some kind of uneasiness about where it’s heading.

I started using del.icio.us not longer than a couple of weeks ago, so it’s not wonder that I feel a bit surprised to become Yahoo! user so unexpectedly. As a matter of fact, till today I don’t recall using any Yahoo! services in general.

Maybe that’s where this feeling of uneasiness comes from. I appreciate simple services that just work, therefore I’m a regular Google client and consequently that’s why del.icio.us felt like home from the very beginning. On the other hand, these are not the virtues that I normally associate Yahoo! with.

I take a second look at my weekend agenda. Believe it or not, I was planning to give Simpy a try this weekend even before hearing this. Seems I wouldn’t be the only one.

Perhaps examining the properties Yahoo! is piling up would be worthwhile as well. After all, there must a plan to all of this, right?

My previous posts related to bookmarking:

• Social bookmarking: an uncharted territory
• Should you dump del.icio.us for Blinklist?
• Bookmarking taken to the next level

Instead of trying to describe the approach, I will take you through my concept map of social bookmarking. Should you wish to try yourself afterwards, you will find suitable links at the bottom of this post.

Below is the concept map that I drew for the social bookmarking topic:

(You can click on the picture to enlarge)

To give a brief introduction, boxes on the map represent concepts, and arrows reflect relations. The map is organized hierarchically, so you can look at it top-down.

The advantage of creating a map is that the process forces you to structure your thinking, identify most important concepts and draw relations between them.

What social bookmarking sites do?

The first section from the left deals with the functions of social bookmarking sites. I could think of three: organize personal bookmarks, discover pages and discover people:

I don?t have much experience in discovering relevant pages through social bookmarking yet, except for being recently impressed with digg. I guess digg?s focus is on that particular function, in contrast with, say, del.icio.us. Blinklist, then, would be somewhere in between. I regret that I cannot refer to Simpy just yet, since I didn’t have time to try it – but I will.

After having exported the map I realized that you can link more to search box than just tags, as some sites allow additionally sifting through the descriptions or cached snapshots of your bookmarks.

Third and last function concerns discovering people with similar interests. The idea is to identify relevant people by analyzing bookmarks that are shared by them. From what I have seen, Blinklist seems to be investing heavily in this area. They are introducing lots of interesting social features, even if in my opinion the interface became somehow overloaded in the process.

Mixing bookmarking with other services

While moving to the right, another feature of the concept maps becomes visible. In the process of mapping, you are driven to think of cross-references between different areas of your particular domain.

As an illustration to this, middle section visualizes some possible combinations of social bookmarking with other web services. It can draw from previous considerations about functions. For example, when thinking about ?discovering people?, I was pondering if any integration is possible between social bookmarking and social networking sites, so that opportunities to find interesting new contacts are enhanced.

Turning to search engines, an idea to consider here would be to use social bookmarking sites as a provider of web pages’ relevance data. Number of people bookmarking given site can be used as indicator of its popularity. Most likely, first you would need to ensure that social bookmarking is a mainstream phenomenon. It would have to cover all the content areas, not only the ones favored by early adopters.

How can you make money on social bookmarking?

The last section of the map concerns business models. Bookmarking people seem either not to have one or don?t want to talk about it just now. E.g. this interview with Blinklist, September 2005:

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

BlinkList: Yes, we have a very clear business model and monetization strategy. However, it is still far too early to be discussing this for BlinkList. First we have to proof the concept, keep innovating and refining the product for our community. Once we have gained critical mass we can start to think about our monetization strategy for BlinkList. (…)

However, advertising is for sure one of the monetization avenues:

Others are hypothetical ones. For example, if previously mentioned integration with search engines works out, you might obtain some revenue out of it (or get bought by search engine).

As far as additional services are concerned, I could think of some value added services for organization or workgroups, allowing creating closed spaces for research projects. But it’s just a thought.

I hope I gave you some idea on how concept mapping can be helpful. I don’t use it on a daily basis, but for exploring new areas it’s one of my favorite tools. The map I described is obviously highly illustrative both for sake of clarity and due to my limited knowledge of social bookmarking itself. Your comments are welcome.

My previous posts related to bookmarking:

• Should you dump del.icio.us for Blinklist?
• Bookmarking taken to the next level

Concept mapping links:

• Wikipedia article is a good way to start, as usual
• CmapTools software (free) was used to create the map for this post
• Kinds of concept maps are described here (actually I thought only hierarchy ones are correct)
• How to construct a concept map describes stages involved
• Matt Waite’s post about his experience with CmapTools
• Flosse Posse article on CmapTools project, focusing on its collaborative features
• And lastly, an interesting map related to problem solving

Sometimes when you are hiking in the mountains, you can climb a mountain for half a day, then finally reach the peak… only to see the next one somewhere far above. I got kind of similar feeling when after couple of hours after posting about del.icio.us I saw this comment from Mike:

Since you are talking about taking bookmarking to the next level, I thought you might like to try our new service www.blinklist.com. No worries, you can just import all of your links from del.icio.us to give it a try. To compare BlinkList vs. del.icio.us you can just check out this page:

http://about.blinklist.com/category/general/blinklist-vs-delicious/

I started reading around first. Awful consulting bias towards researching instead of actually doing something yourself.

Finding a Blinklist review is hardly a challenge. Mike has been doing a heck of a job in terms of viral marketing. More difficult would be to find a reviewer unimpressed by Blinklist:

• Techcrunch: “Worthy addition to the ranks of social bookmarking services, and one of our favorites”.
• Blended Edu: “MindValley has created an impressive product with so many applications that learning communities–from grade school to corporate training?will be looking for ways to integrate BlinkList into their curriculum”
• TipMonkies: “It doesn?t have as many users as some of the other services, but considering the quality of the service, and the obvious level of attention which it gets from its developers, I?m sure this will change soon. Definitely an A+ site, for sure”
• Talkings of a Tyrant: “To conclude this rather short blog post, I hereby announce that I?ve switched over to Blinklist! No more ugly-looking del.icio.us for me!”

Reading these and a couple more got me interested in some Blinklist features that I thought I could like. They included ?starring? links to mark them out (I use this functionality in Gmail, though not very often), making links ?private?, and the social features in general, even if for me they are hardly a ?must-have? at this stage.

As a result, I eventually found myself ready to give Blinklist a personal try and sacrifice part of a weekend to evaluate it.

Fast forward: I?m still curious how useful in practice are Blinklist’s social features. The reason I don?t know it yet? Before you have the opportunity to play with them, you need to learn the basics, which in my case took a lot of time ? as a matter of fact more than it should. While I enjoy the idea of extending the social part of bookmarking, I have mixed feelings as to the way Blinklist handles the very basics. For now, I will stick with del.icio.us to cover my daily bookmarking needs, while keeping an eye on Blinklist, to get more used to it and maybe find a feature that would make me switch for good. Below I elaborate more on the experience that I had.

Maybe I should first clarify expectations that I have. I like tools that are simple, fast and focus on the tasks they are meant for. Yet, behind a simple front-end they provide a wide range of functionalities – when you need them. Or, they easily connect with other tools to do the job.

To give an example, Google could have filled half a screen with search options, yet they provide just one search form by default. When I want to refine my search, I use modifiers. If I want to search for images, I just switch to a different tab. That?s the approach I?m trying to describe here.

Consequently, what I need today is a tool to manage my bookmarks effectively (because I have too many). There are other features which are ?nice to have?s, but the basic job is just this. And from this point of view, I think del.icio.us is currently closer to ?keep it clear and simple? attitude. How did I come to this?

I started with importing my del.icio.us bookmarks to Blinklist, which went smoothly. Then I did some clicking around. It didn?t take long before I found myself looking at the screen, trying to understand where I was. It was split into parts ? left showing a number of tabs and an embedded browser titled ?recent?, and the right just with bookmarks, with similar ?most recent? label. Was it only my bookmarks or public space, non filtered or focused around some tab?

It took me a while before I figured out where to look for ?where are you now? information and how to switch between my own list and public, general view and tab-wise. Since I don?t remember spending much time to grasp what del.icio.us was about, I thought there was some issue here.

I wanted to make an attempt to identify what actually makes the difference. What you will find below is just some ?illustrative? stuff to my experience (you always go ?illustrative? in non-billable time)

First, for comparison, del.icio.us screen showing bookmarks from my list for ?blogging? tab:

Dotted blue line shows the part of the site which you use for navigation. You can always easily see your current location there. You use it to move back and forward as well. The stripe below the navigator tells you if you are browsing yours or public bookmarks. It also gives you one-click links to switch between those views. All in all, I guess the approach is pretty intuitive. When I saw it first time it just worked as I expected.

Now Blinklist screen in the same scenario:

Again, dotted blue line shows areas which I think are meant for navigation.

On the left side, there is a panel showing current location (this took me some time to figure out), as well as embedded browser with some sub tabs and other options like ?watchlist?. When you switch from your bookmarks for ?blogging? tab to public ones, you end up on ?discovery page? with a different layout and no left panel. Best way to do this switch I don?t know yet, currently I use search box, but it requires two clicks and is not very comfortable.

I think that lack of fixed navigation across the site is what makes it a bit problematic to move around, at least in the beginning. Also tags with similar labels (red line) showing different things are confusing, when you don?t know their function. Altogether it created a significant entry barrier, at least so far as I am concerned.

To wrap up: other reviewers often said that the (only) issue they see with Blinklist is its relatively small user base. I would add, if other people need as much time as I did to get to know the basics, it may be more difficult to gather the critical mass.

In the appendix: bugs
(Actually I don?t believe anyone will reach this far)

We are talking about work in progress here, so bugs and rough edges are inevitable, thus I didn?t pay much attention to them. But just for the record:

• What really gave a break at the very beginning was the way Blinklist imported my Firefox bookmarks. Instead of tagging links using names of bookmarks folders, as I expected, it exploded each title into separate keywords. Result: 306 links imported, producing over 900 tags. Ouch. I managed to delete all of the links and then imported bookmarks from del.icio.us instead.
• Searching for an url returned a 404 error

That’s when I decided to take a longer look at del.icio.us. It seems that everyone was using it, anyway.

Now I am bought as well. Given its popularity this may not be interesting for many, but if you haven’t tried it yet, maybe I can give you a picture what you are missing:

• The idea is to store your bookmarks online instead of in the browser
• Another idea is to let other people see what you bookmarked
• Now it may seem a bit weird thing to do at first glance, but thanks to this you can see how many people bookmarked the same page as you
• Also you can drill down to see who is in this group exactly and what else does he have
• You can use tags to classify each link (tag can by any keyword), and of course you can use tags for searching

There is also possibility to integrate my links into the blog somehow.. but I’m not there yet.

Nevertheless I felt it was a must to integrate it with Firefox – del.icio.us post works fine for me, simply adds an item to Firefox context menu. But you can find a lot more at Absolutely Del.icio.us – Complete Tool Collection.