A comparison of bookmarking tools - after Delicious' shutting down debacle
This guide will hopefully inform you of the apps/tools available for saving bookmarks/websites, and will then help you decide based on how you use your current bookmark tool.
The contenders
Regular, delicious-style bookmarking
- Diigo (also supports powerful research features)
- Google Bookmarks (import bookmarks here)
- Pinboard (import bookmarks here)
- Mister Wong
- Your browsers bookmarks tool + Xmarks/Mozilla Weave/Chrome Sync/MobileMe (check this out for a cool bookmarking strategy that I wish I had used from the start)
Other tools
- Historious
- Instapaper
- Zootool
- Evernote (ever popular for taking notes, Evernote can easily be used for bookmarks too - import from delicious by following this)
- BlinkList
- Faves
- Connotea (aimed at professional researchers)
- favbot (worth looking at once they open up some more invites - it bookmarks stuff automatically without the need to do anything. I wonder if they take into account the amount of time you spend on a page?)
- favilous
- faviki
Other notes:
- If you are leaving Delicious, export your bookmarks here
Now, here's how to decide
If you just want a replacement to Delicious, that works mostly the same way:
- Sign up to Pinboard if you are happy paying $~9 to signup (I think it's worth it)
- Sign up to Mister Wong if you don't want to pay anything
If you want a simple and free tool, that uses folders and works almost like your browsers bookmarks but is online:
- Google bookmarks
If you will be saving a lot of rich content, like images and videos:
- Check out Zootool
If you are happy bookmarking in your browser:
- Check out one of Xmarks/Mozilla Weave/Chrome Sync/MobileMe to sync your bookmarks and safeguard against data loss (Xmarks - any, Weave - Firefox, Chrome Sync - Chrome, MobileMe - Safari)
If you tend to bookmark pages, and never look at them again through your bookmarks, and would rather search to find stuff:
- Historious
If you rarely bookmark stuff, and when you do it is usually stuff you want to read:
- Instapaper
If you are bookmarking for research purposes (not necessarily academic research, this could mean research for a blog post you want to write):
- Check out Diigo
- Check out Evernote
Don't feel limited to one tool, as you can certainly combine multiple apps.
As for me, I think I will use a combination of Historious (or possibly favbot once I try them out) and Evernote or Diigo.
