An excellent post by Ari Paparo, co-founder of Blink.com, an early social bookmarking site - minus the "social".
Ari opens up in a confessional tone:
Now a little part of me is cringing as I write this. Having founded a bookmarking company in 1999 with pretty much the exact same vision as the new crop of services, I’ve got to feel, well, a little stupid. (or angry, or depressed, or whatever). Maybe writing about it will make me feel better and maybe even help me make a point or two about product development.
Ari goes on to identify a handful of reasons why he thinks Blink failed where del.icio.us has succeeded. The biggest reason seems to have been their decision to use folders and categories instead of tags. That decision had dire implications for other aspects of the product. They painted themselves into a corner.
In summary, he writes:
Some simple innovations like using tags instead of folders, making public the default, building better discovery features, etc made the difference between being an also-ran and a hot acquisition target.
When social bookmarking really works, it's because it's because it is equal parts "social" and "bookmarking". Blink ended up being too much of the latter and not enough of the former. Ditto for Backflip.
A big thank you to Ari for these insights.
Tags: tagging del.icio.us technology
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