There's a ton of websites out there for people to store and share bookmarks.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is handy, because you don't have to reinvent the wheel -- you can search for words and phrases or browse by category, and see what other people have already found and recommended on those searches/categories.
Of course, the other aspect of social bookmarking sites is that people are using them to get backlinks and promote their sites by tagging and bookmarking them, hoping that'll help them get found.
But you don't just need other people to find your web pages; you want to find and save webpages you like.
Organizing Your Own Bookmarks
More to the point, you want a clean, fast way to access, organize, and label your bookmarks to you can flip through them. ("Now what was that nice website on hot air balloons I saw last year? What was its name?")
I use StumbleUpon, Digg and de.licio.us to some extent, but my go-to site has become Backflip when I need to save a site for later reference, or to find my old bookmarks. It's not as popular as those sites, but it has certain advantages that suit my web surfing style.
Here's what I like about Backflip
- You can create folders and sub-folders for storing bookmarks.
- You can set folders as public or private. That means people can browse sites you recommend, but NOT your favorites that you'd rather not broadcast to the whole world. (E.G. do you really want your boss knowing what online poker sites you frequent?)
- Storing bookmarks on Backflip means you can access your bookmarks anywhere with your username/password. This had become my favorite way to share bookmarks across 2 different computers.
- Backflip Buddy mimics the way you browse folders on your computer: folders on left, bookmarks in folder in right pane (see screenshot below). Add Backflip Buddy to your browser toolbar to open and close it like a drawer.
- Adding "Backflip It!" to your toolbar gives you a one-touch button for bookmarking any web page you're viewing. You can add a nickname and short description to help remember it and pick a folder, or let it drop in "Everything Else" and edit details later (See screenshot below.)
- There are several ways to search your bookmarks: by folder, alphabetically, or by date added.
- Backflip's interface is attractive to the eye, well-organized and compact. Clean and efficient layout really does make some websites easier to use than others.
- You can create a "Daily Routine" list of sites you check often. (See screenshot below of "Daily Routine" interface.)
- As with other bookmarking sites, you can search other people's bookmarks and find new sites you wouldn't have on your own from the "My Backflip" page.
- It's free, and what few ads there are don't get in the way.
- I really have told my friends (or at least Mom) where my Backflip profile page is, in order to direct her to sites I like. I've not done that with any other bookmarking service.
- I haven't used this feature, but you can set a folder to be "shared" so that Backflip users you specify can add to and edit bookmarks in it.
My One Quibble
The only thing about Backflip that's a little annoying is that, at least the way my browser is set up, the Backflip! window opens behind the current browser window sometimes, so then I have to go up to the menubar and bring it to front. This may be due to my popup blocker settings; I haven't bothered to check Backflip support to see why that happens.
Some people may miss the lack of the Tag feature, but the Folder concept is more intuitive for many users since it's been a way of organizing stuff on computers since the early 80s.
Screenshots of Backflip in Action
(Click on screenshots at the bottom of this intel and click again for large, readable versions)
1) Working With Backflip Buddy / Backflip Folders
I opened Backflip Buddy, that squiggle bookmark at top left on my toolbar, to get the pane at left, which is an index of my folders and subfolders. Click arrows to expand/collapse the directory. The tiny green circles are the folders I've set to be viewable by the public.
When you pick a folder, it opens the folder in the main screen, at right. There you see all the sub-folders and-or bookmarks in that folder. You can then edit/delete/rename them.
2) Backflip It! to Add a Page
If you add the Backflip It! bookmarklet to your toolbar, you can click on it anywhere to add the page you're browsing. An extra window opens where you can name and describe the bookmark, and store it in a folder and/or in your Daily Routine.
3) My Backflip
This is the front page of Backflip, accessible when you hit the My Backflip tab seen in Screenshot #1. Here, you can browse other people's public folders, search them or the web, and see what other people are Backflipping in various categories.
4) My Daily Routine Tour
You can flag bookmarks as "My Daily Routine" and choose what order to put them in. "My Daily Routine" is accessible from "My Backflip," or, of course, you can bookmark it. The purple bar stays across the top of your browser window, then you use the arrow keys or pulldown menu to make the rounds of your favorite sites. It's like an iTunes playlist, as opposed to your iTunes library.
