I feel like I’m missing something. I wanted a more intuitive way to bookmarks sites than firefox favorites, so I searched around for a mindmapping bookmark manager, and came upon delicious. While I see the value of learning from other people’s favorite links, I can’t imagine that isn’t trumped by people’s desire for privacy. I consider myself a relatively open guy but I sure as hell wouldn’t want my bookmarks published. Christ, it’s practically a diary. I know there is a hack to make delicious bookmarks private but is there a good online private bookmark site?
I guess it depends on what kind of bookmarks you’re keeping. Personally, I’m a big fan of del.icio.us.
Most of mine are for work, school, or just my own general interest. Nothing I would care whether someone knew about or not, and in most cases it’s beneficial to see what other people are bookmarking. If I come across a tutorial or resource and I see a lot of people have it bookmarked I can figure it’s probably pretty good. Often times I’ll search from delicious to find what I’m looking for instead of a search engine. Sort of a pre-filtered, pre-ranked search. It’s a good way of staying plugged into the zeitgeist.
Also, it’s an easy, intuititve way to share with others. My friends with similar interests have accounts too, and we all browse each others bookmarks to keep up with what’s going on in a particular area or subject. Seeing as most of my friends work in information-sharing based industries (librarians, IT, etc.) it seems odd not to share.
There are many different bookmark managers out there though. While I haven’t tried most of these, here is a list of several free online bookmark managers with a brief synopsis of each.
I recommend Yahoo Bookmarks. No bells or whistles, it’s pretty simple and straightforward, but it’s free and not public. 