Ri.dic.u.lous

Alright, I know you really really need to know this so I just have to oblige. Presenting - tada - social bookmark manager #4,523: Scuttle.

OK, now how many of these sites do we need? This is getting ri.dic.u.lous. Does anyone remember Blink? They're still out there, but I bet you thought they were out of business. I sure did. iHarvest was another pioneer in the same burgeoning bookmark market back in 1999 and they're long gone.

So what's to guarantee that this era's bookmark sites will not end up in the same train wreck that took down the Web 1.0 pioneers? Sure these new sites are social and that makes a big difference, but a huge shakeout in the Web 2.0 bookmark "market" is coming - and fast. Yahoo won when they bought del.icio.us. Game over. Move along. Nothing to see here. The bookmarks have left the building.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Bookmarks

Comments

[Niall Cook]

I'm not so sure. There's a big opportunity here that is just waiting to be taken.

I also don't think Yahoo! bought del.icio.us because they wanted to offer a social bookmarking service.

[Zoli Erdos]

Scuttle has been around as an open source behind-your-firewall bookmark tool for a while. We've been using it at a startup - I never particularly liked it though. I don't know if thise online public version is new (?)

[Kent Newsome]

I completely agree, but you know what's even more mind boggling is the number of online calendars that are popping up everywhere.

A lot of these "me too" apps are great science projects. What scares me, though, is that too many people view them as businesses.

That reeks of Bubble 1.0.

[Niall Kennedy]

Scuttle is open source and available for use on any server with MySQL and PHP.

You are welcome to check out my personal Scuttle install to get a better feel for its use.

Unlike other social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Scuttle can be installed behind the firewall for bookmark sharing among small teams.

[Chris Brainard]

Your right about the web 2.0 fall out but I would like to comment on Blink. They were awesome at the time and I used them until they started plastering the site with ads and selling customer info. Then when they started charging for the service it was all over. This kind of business model drives away users in flocks. Just look at Friendster.com who took the same path and now they are failing and just waiting for someone to buy them out.

The real power of Web 2.0 is really community. Combine that with a workable business model where you make money in a way that doesn't interfere with the user experience and you can be very successful. I look at Radio Paradise which is totally community funded with no ads and has raised over 50k this year in one month.

People are still figuring out the new business model that is setting this new wave of internet ventures and I think it will be key to who survives and who doesn’t. Also it is getting easier for smaller groups of people to make something they love and keep it alive as server costs have dropped quite a bit. So I think we will also see a large diversity of web 2.0 sites being able to survive. I feel the web has grown by leaps and bounds as the community of people have push forward after all the business tried to buy the web and failed for the most part.

[Dino Baskovic]

There are far too many tagging and social bookmarking sites, agreed. Then a site like ma.gnolia comes along and sucks us all in. Figures...

[Peter Cooper]

I'm imagining you'd also advise against starting a PR blog nowadays, right? ;-)

[Jeremy Zawodny]

Would it surprise you to know that we're running an instance of Scuttle inside Yahoo?

[Frank Gruber]

I thought you were going to introduce another RSS reader and was somewhat relieved when it was another social bookmarking site.

Obviously, I am in agreement with you that there are quite a few of these puppies getting pumped out and it does seem somewhat ridiculous. However, if there is a business model that supports another RSS reader or social bookmarking site or even another vertical search for that matter, than I say go for…I love new products!

[James E. Robinson, III]

scuttle is (a) open source, (b) API compatable with del.icio.us and (c) been around a long while (relatively speaking).

[Eric Mattson]

Steve,

I'm sorry but I've got to disagree.

Yahoo doesn't win anything until Google and Microsoft (plus whatever truly innovative startup is lurking out there) decide they don't want to play.

[sandro]

If a script could collect tags and bookmarks from all those #4,523 Bookmark Databases, that would be very useful and much more "folksonomy".

[David Scott Lewis]

Let's face it, Furl was (and still is) better than del.icio.us, primarily due to the fact that it whacks the viewed content. Bookmarks are cute, but bookmarks with bookmarked full-text content are a helluva lot better. And this is why Furl (and Spurl, for that matter) are better than del.icio.us. The social computing aspect of del.icio.us might be better (although this functionality is in Furl, too), but the whacking is much more critical, at least to me. I want to create a library of content, not just get access to links to related content. Furl rocks!! del.icio.us sucks!! (Maybe "sucks" is too strong, but it's certainly "weak" compared to Furl.)

[Dave]

Here's the problem I have with this post, Scuttle has been around for almost a year and now you are taking shots at it? Little late to the game here...

[Marcus]

Hiya,

Thanks the mention, even if it was only in passing. It seriously made me all warm and fuzzy to see the commenters defend Scuttle for what it is, rather than what it is easy to mistake scuttle.org for.

Scuttle.org is just my development space for the main open-source project, which I started working on back in November 2004. That's why it usually looks or works differently from the last stable release. I'm just a bloke who loves programming, not a start-up company or anything like that. I suppose if I claimed it was a business then at least I wouldn't be unemployed. Technically. Heh.

There are indeed a lot of social bookmark managers out there, but I wouldn't agree that they should give up just because of the overwhelming popularity of del.icio.us or any other system. Monopolies are boring.

Anyway, thanks again everyone.

Jeremy: It certainly surprised me to hear that Yahoo! is running an instance of Scuttle. Neat!

[ycc2106]

Yes, there are tonnes!
Check out this list!:http://3spots.blogspot.com/2006/01/all-social-that-can-bookmark.html

[Meredith]

I remember Blink, and I remember Backflip, and... and... and...

[Spooner]

I think there is another point that you could have made: Social bookmarking is the "Flash Intro" or corporate Blog of 2005. Just a neat little add on that gives site owners another feature to pad out their press releases with. Amazon has social tagging for products? huh? You are right there are WAY TOO MANY general interest social bookmarking sites.

But what truly is the power of open source social bookmarking software is the micro communities that can grab hold of this concept and run with it. Social tagging is a great method for segmenting and categorizing links in understandable groups. And within a small group of folks; let's say DJ mixtape fans. http://www.blentwell.com serves as a great resource that is easy to navigate based on the genre breakdown assigned by users. Blentwell is based on Scuttle.

Now in the del.ico.us world a hip-hop DJ mixtape would be lost due to the over abundance of unrelated categories and subsections. And also your average del.ico.us user is not really up on his or her Hiphop DJs. But when you go to a micro community of fans of DJs you can get a TON of information dealing specifically with what you like. And you can get even more granular thanks to social tagging; you like hip-hop well what type of hip-hop? crunk, miami bass, chopped & screwed, folk-hop, backpack, etc. etc.

So while the overarching all encompassing social bookmarking site idea is passe, and glomming social tags onto any site that moves is foolish. There are many worthwhile community sites that can use social tagging to great effect.