Ever since the host of problems at del.icio.us this past week, which left me stranded without my bookmarks, I have been looking out for other social bookmarking services.
I checked out both Simpy and Blinklist. Simpy has a clean, delicious kinda (actually better) look and seemed nicer at first. But then I saw their URLs for tags and people, and hated it. Yes, they probably have it in their todos, but I want a delicious replacement *today*.
I checked out Blinklist next, and it was far better. I mean, if you can ignore the tags cloud which takes up half of the precious screen space in multicolor, you will discover a lot of other nice things about Blinklist.
- First of all, blinklist uses Ajax everywhere it can. So during registration, you get a google kind of(actually better) feedback immediately about whether your nickname is taken. Many other small things become immediately faster because of ajax. This includes the Google kinda starring, tag editing, etc.
- Another thing that always impresses me is responsiveness of developers. I posted a bug I found, and within a very short time I got a reply from Mike with his acknowledgement. Fantastic! That is how you make users feel special and they will hang on to you. Of course, this will depend on the number of users I guess. Lets see how this scales up. delicious has left a very bad taste in the mouth
- Blinklist supports private links. This was what I always wanted in delicious. It allows me to say, add links for the photo albums of my family and relatives, something I would not like always to be in public.
- Tags can be multi word in Blinklist. I wonder how such a simple requirement could have escaped delicious.
- Blinklists biggest strength is its focus on social sharing. It allows you to have friend watch lists, and restrict searches to your friends. There is also work underway to have private spaces for organizations. I believe this would get some much needed money for such projects without having to sell yourself someday.
There are many other features I haven’t yet tried in blinklist, but I would strongly encourage you to try blinklist and tell me when you find them. 
Ofcourse there are things in Blinklist that I personally would like to be happening differently.
- For non-logged in persons that half page blinklist promotion at the top becomes very irritating. If I pass on my blinklist page to someone who doesnt have an account there, I can understand his irritation in having to scroll to see anything other than the top two links in the page.
- Since the site is already very javascript focussed, a link to hide the colorful “discovery page” (containing the cloud, etc.) on the left hand side would be helpful. It would also be a great feature if there is an option to turn the cloud into a simple list of tags (for users) if the user fancies. After all, 90% of the site should be tuned to regular users who demand functionality, over others who like a “pretty” site.
- The advanced search link is weird. It is not a regular link but looks like one, but if you bring your cursor over it, up pops a help window about what it is about. I assume it is under construction.
The problems at delicious has taught me a lesson. Never rely on one provider for such an important function. It is like using more than one email provider, because email problems do happen in every provider one time or the other.
I would really like blinklist to have the bookmark sync feature of simpy. This way I can keep blinklist and delicious in sync. If blinklist ever goes down for any reason, I can save my day by using delicous meantime.
Update:
- Seems like the blinklist frontpage features a text list of the tags now. This is cool. The developers are improving all the time.
- Clicking on the favorite tab seems to hide the tag cloud. This is also remembered across logins, it seems. This is cool too. Even though I would still prefer a larger part of the page being devoted to the links. And for a left to right reader, it makes more sense to keep the main content(the links in my opinion) to the left of the page, and not right. It is easier to mentally shut out the right column that way when you are looking for that link you just added a week ago.
