The New Wave of Bookmarks
March 3rd, 2005Mary Ellen Bates on The New Wave of Bookmarks:
“My primary objection to del.icio.us is that there is no straightforward way to keep your bookmarks private. The strong default is to share your bookmarks and their associated ‘tags’ with other subscribers. While I understand that this is the way that a social bookmarking system grows, to virtually require that all bookmarks be public reduces the system’s usefulness for many researchers. If Schachter adds the ability to set the user default to private, rather than public, bookmarks, and if Del.icio.us gets past pre-pre-alpha, it would be a real competitor to Furl.”
I’m not too sure about this. I think del.icio.us is not only a real competitor to Furl, but could actually have more users (I have no evidence of this - I’m basing this on my use of both). If anything, they are on even par with each other as far as userbase. Sure, Furl has alot more options, but that’s what makes del.icio.us different than Furl. Why should both services offer the same features? I like no frills.
Pre-pre alpha also means nothing to me. How many Google products are still in beta? Del.icio.us has been in pre-pre-alpha for over a year and half now. It may never even get to beta.
Bates also has issues with the “all public” bookmarking aspect on del.icio.us. While I understand this issue, I doubt that del.icio.us will ever have a private bookmarking feature. The whole concept around del.icio.us is the collective knowledge base. Private bookmarks goes against the grain of open-tagging bookmarking systems. It’s about the whole rather than the individual.