The seemingly simple idea of managing bookmarks is surprisingly more nuanced; I have managed to find at least five main types of bookmarking software. In this note I'll cover them. The types are:
*. Bookmark bar *. Social bookmarking *. Forum *. Personal archive *. Annotation
= 1. Bookmark bar The simplest and the most widely deployed method of bookmarking is the bookmark bar. It's found in all browsers. In desktop ones it does indeed look like a horizontal bar of bookmarks. On mobile devices it's more like a menu, but I still call it a bookmark bar for the sake of this anthology.
In browser
= 2. Social bookmarking Delicious and Pinboard descendants
Descriptions, tags, sharing
[[Betula]]
If we remove the social aspect from social bookmarking, we are still left with something usable. Such software would be more complex than a bookmark bar, and there is demand for such software. Betula started as such, [[Shaarli]] is still like that. I don't think it's worth to make a separate category. It's in the middle between bookmark bar and social bookmarking.
= 3. Forum Reddit Digg
Social bookmarking + upvoting + threaded comments + karma + drama
= 4. Personal archive Pocket, Instapaper
Anti-social
Littlest accent on metadata
= 5. Annotation Hypothesis. Zotero?
- public document at doc.anagora.org/on_bookmark_managers
- video call at meet.jit.si/on_bookmark_managers
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