Ma.gnolia

For a few days now, I've been running a Ma.gnolia account — here. At first glance, it resembles del.icio.us after a trip to the beautician: as I said to Todd Sieling, product manager, 'The GUI you're using is simply stunning — very beautiful, easy on the eye, a pleasure to work with — clear and informative: enough info, links, option choices, etc, but not noisy'.

Importing my del.icio.us bookmarks was easy, and Todd tells me that Ma.gnolia will 'make a saved copy when a bookmark is added, regardless of how, though it will be a while until you see saved copies of all your bookmarks. The process takes a little while with so many bookmarks'. Tag editing will come ('removal and other management tools are on the way') and other ideas that didn't make it into this beta public release (eg, 'a dead link report at the end of an import that will let people follow up on or remove bookmarks that get no response when we try to make the saved copy') will no doubt make an appearance at some stage.

Nick Chapman's Greasemonkey script for copying individual del.icio.us bookmarks works well, but it would be really useful to be able to post a bookmark simultaneously to both del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia.  In fact, great as Nick's script is, there's an appreciable use of time involved in copying across several bookmarks by this means, and since I imported my bank of del.icio.us bookmarks I've made many more and just haven't got round to copying them into Magnolia.

So will I use Ma.gnolia? Todd on the Ma.gnolia/del.icio.us contrasts:

• Ma.gnolia offers a very different design for a different kind of social bookmarking experience. We prefer focus and ease of use over large amounts of information on a page, and believe that while del.icio.us' way of presenting information works for some people, it doesn't work for the average web user. Both approaches are valid, but neither works for everyone. One way to think about it is that del.icio.us is more like Linux and Ma.gnolia is more like Mac OS - different values, appealing to different sensibilities.

• Bookmark Ratings give you a chance to differentiate yours and other people's bookmarks for quality.

• Saved Copies of web pages at the time you bookmark them, so you won't be lost if a bookmarked page disappears since you bookmarked it.

• Make Contacts of other members to easily watch their collections and to directly share bookmarks with others.

• Private Bookmarks.

• Groups, both public and private.

• Import from browsers and other services.

I love the interface of Ma.gnolia but am wedded to the bare-bones simplicity, the GTD-effectiveness of del.icio.us; nevertheless, to be able to post simultaneously to Ma.gnolia, given that it's making a copy of each bookmarked page, would be good. I'm not fussed at all about privacy — though I know from the del.icio.us discussion lists that some users want this. And if I want to share my bookmarks, it's easy for a friend or contact to take my del.icio.us feed and follow what I'm tagging. Nothing is hidden: look!

I am also committed to del.icio.us because of its user base. Joshua said last week that del.icio.us is not a community — there are no conversations and the aim is instead to let individuals and communities use del.icio.us — but I value it very much for the way it enhances so much my eyes and ears: because I know people through it, most of whom I may never have met physically, whose expertise or interests add to or complement mine, I find news, ideas, research, etc that I would not come across outside of del.icio.us. My del.icio.us inbox is, in effect, a net in which to catch "interestingness" — web interestingness. (del.icio.us as an attention lens.) **And**: tagging! So hard to put my finger on this, but what the people whose eyes and ears I've come to trust (whose judgement and taste have become important to me) choose to tag pages with is often provoking and interesting in its own right and builds its own kind of … community network.

Todd is interviewed here and explains in more detail some of the thinking behind Ma.gnolia. Also reported there is Jeffrey Zeldman, who speaks about the design. They may indeed have concocted a service that will have wide appeal to end-users not yet into social-bookmarking. Moreover, as this interview makes clear, Ma.gnolia is aiming to create its own user-community:

Our approach moves beyond just sharing bookmarks. We want to make bookmarking more about collaboration and about bringing attention to what the community is looking at through our Hot Bookmarks and Hot Tags sidebar items. Sharing across channels and looking at interests as an aspect of both individuals and a community will make for a different kind of experience than Del.icio.us has done well with.

But you know, I don't see the market as being dominated by anyone right now. There are still lots of people out there who haven't even heard of social bookmarking, or didn't know you could simply store your bookmarks online. We hope to reach those people with a style and way of working that will appeal to them. And when you look at all the cool ways that people are mashing up web services and remixing data, I think there's more to be had in thinking about the cooperative opportunities than what competition will be like. Sure we want people to like what we offer, but it doesn't have to be at the expense of someone else's service.

As for the name, you need to go here to understand it.

Technorati tags: Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, social bookmarking