I have been publicly promoting social bookmarks since 2005, when I was using a defunct tool called FURL. Since then I have used Magnolia, Delicious, Diigo, and Pinboard. The first two are gone and the last two seem to be waning. For example, I cannot access my account settings when logged-in to Pinboard. Others are having no luck getting support from Diigo.
What are social bookmarks? They are like bookmarks on your browser except they are available online from any device, they are searchable, and you can add metadata like hashtags and categories. They can be public or private. The most important aspect is that they are shareable. Here are my Diigo bookmarks and Pinboard pins, as examples.
We discussed the demise of social bookmarks at our monthly coffee club Zoom call today and community members shared some practices and resources.
For instance, you could use Slack as a social bookmark tool (though it’s not very shareable unless you invite all your friends and pay for their access to content more than 90 days old)
Step 1: Sign up for a personal Slack team.
Yes, this is correct. Your personal team is supposed to have one and only member — you. Don’t worry if it sounds a little weird having a team of yourself, just go on.
Step 2: Use the power of channels
Besides the automatically generated #general and #random, create as many channels, as you think would matter to your needs. I have one for each of the projects I am currently working on, as well as one for each of the fields that I want to personally progress in (#java_scala, #devops_backend, #javascript, etc). Other useful channels would be #travel (collect ideas for future trips), #music (bookmark current favorite songs), etc. If a thought applies to more than one channel, simply drop it where you think it would fit best, and refer the other channel (as a hashtag).
Step 3: Start dumping your thoughts as they come to your mind.
—Using Slack as a Personal Knowledge Hub (2015)
There were also comments that perhaps we don’t need to save all information online, as we often do not find or use it again.
I had a conversation with Arthur de Villemandy, co-founder of Capsule, during which I inquired about the tricks employed by his curators. He responded with remarkable clarity, stating, “Curation isn’t about accumulating; it’s about the art of non-choice. What truly matters is the overall coherence of the selections.” This shift from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to NOMO (Necessity of Missing Out) could be the key to more mindful and conscious information management in the age of information overload. NOMO, fundamentally, isn’t about deprivation; it’s about liberation. Choosing is accumulating. Omitting is freeing. —Sifting Through the Noise (2023)
Several people use physical bookmarks, like Book Darts, but they don’t seem to be very shareable. Other tools, like Are.na and Pocket were mentioned. The latter is owned by the Mozilla Foundation and integrates with the Firefox browser.
Many of us miss the social aspects of sharing bookmarks. When Jay Cross was writing the Working Smarter Fieldbook in 2010, his collaborators shared resources in a community group we set up on Diigo, all categorized and with our comments.
I am going to look into Are.na and reload Pocket [it does not seem possible to import my bookmarks from Diigo or Pinboard though]. This is learning in perpetual beta. Sharing curated resources is an essential element of personal knowledge mastery. Now I need to update my online workshop for the next cohort.
Pinboard.in works well for me, I use it a lot. In including account config. Hope this helps.
Amusingly I also use Signal messaging to chat with myself to save things.
Do any of you use Raindrop? This is where I went after the post-Delicious hiatus. It’s free, and you can create private or public collections there. Also tags, comments, etc. I find it quite useful.
Thanks, Mercè. I had not heard about it https://raindrop.io
I came here to say this same thing. Raindrop.io is so good. I used to use Delicious, Diigo, and Pinboard. Eventually, I landed on Raindrop and have never looked back. There are so many things I like about it, but one thing is that you can make an RSS feed out of any of your collections of bookmarks. You can also share collections of bookmarks with other people (as in all contribute to the same folder/collection of bookmarks). I could keep gushing, but will stop myself for now.
I’ve used Are.na (https://www.are.na/) on and off over the past couple of years, trying in out with limited topics I’d “clip” . . . and am revisiting it as I reconsider/rearrange my tools and workflows for bookmarking. And as also mentioned, I have been trying out Raindrop since early summer 2023.
Hi Harold,
You might be interested in having a look at Readocracy – not directly a bookmark tool and has lots of additional functionality but some of the options are comparable, e.g. creating lists of resources.
I have made a small foray:
https://readocracy.com/collections/learning-and-development
Thanks, Ian. I will check it out.
It really is a pitty – it seems like alle the valuable social service, which keep creating so much intellectual value, fail to make money… and dying, or being abused to kill humans lifetime with unwanted adds or changed relevance oriented algorithms to “keep them online – filterbubble jail” machines.
I keep using and promoting like you (thank you!!!)… but it’s getting harder
I was able to save my Pinboard bookmarks as an HTML file and easily import all of them into Raindrop.
I hope it’s useful for you. The free version is enough for me, I use tags, add notes for future reference, and keep private and public collections, a couple of them shared with former clients.
After installing, I noticed that Raindrop took all my CPU time and burned my battery from full to 10% in two hours. I have an M1 Mac that usually lasts for several hours on battery. So I deleted it.
Mmm… I also use a M1 Mac and haven’t had these issues. Hope you find an alternative that works for you, then. Have a nice weekend.
I am still happy with diigo! my best work tool…
Came here looking for ideas when i found the search at diigo not giving me good results (ie nothing from the last 2 weeks even when i can see the search term right there in the bookmark)…
Tempted to try Raindrop, it certainly looks good, but not if it’s gonna take all my CPU time