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Everyone knows that storing your bookmarks online just makes sense, and being able to share your bookmarks and search through other people's bookmarks is great way to discover new sites. But the phenomenon of "social bookmarking" has exploded in the last year and with so many sites out there offering their services, which one should you chose?
There is no one site that has it all. Some sites focus more on sharing and discovery, while others offer more options for sorting and organizing.
Last week we set out to review some of the more popular social bookmarking websites on the Monkey Bites blog. We discovered that almost all these sites have the same basic features, browser bookmarklets for easily saving pages, RSS feeds, good support for tagging, and various ways of sharing your bookmarks with the world.
Where each of these sites differ is what features they offer on top of the basic feature set. What works best for you will depend somewhat on what advanced features you're looking for.
Here's our list of the best places to store and share your bookmarks while searching and discovering new sites from other users.
**del.icio.us**
Del.icio.us is the social bookmarking site that started the whole trend and it remains one of the most popular. Thanks to its handy search and sharing features, del.icio.us is also an interesting site to explore even if you don't use it for storage.
**Good:** del.icio.us is simple and easy to use, has excellent sharing features, and has a nice, if poorly documented, backend API which means there are lots of tools like browser toolbars, Firefox plugins and more.
**Bad:** There aren't a lot of organizational options in del.icio.us, you can tag entries, but there's no folders or other storage mechanisms that newcomers may expect. The other downside to del.icio.us is it doesn't take screen captures of your page nor does it cache the bookmarked page. If the page disappears, so does the usefulness of your bookmark.
**Overall:** Ease of use and number of add-ons will appeal to newcomers and del.icio.us is probably the most widely used, thus offering a large pool of potential search results.
Wired News rating: 6
**Wink**
Wink is a relative newcomer, but it already has a strong following thanks to it's amazing search capabilities. In addition to the bookmarks users submit and store, Wink also scrapes tags from del.icio.us, Yahoo MyWeb, Flickr and offers a feature that it calls "PeopleRank." PeopleRank allows anyone to rate the quality of search results with a simple five-star system.
**Good:** Wink offers roughly the same storage features as del.icio.us, but adds a fantastic search engine on top. Wink also makes it easy to (manually) sync with del.icio.us so you can use both in conjunction.
**Bad:** Wink's features are not well documented and new users may be overwhelmed. Unlike some of the other sites reviewed, Wink does not offer page cache feature.
**Overall:** The great search features make Wink worth a visit even if you don't end up using the site.
Wired News rating: 5
**Furl**
LookSmart's Furl sets itself apart with excellent export formats and a plethora of metadata options. Furl caches bookmarked pages for you which means you can view the content even if the original page disappears. Furl also allows you to export your archives, cached pages and all, to a zip file for easy backup, something none of the other services offer.
**Good:** Furl has an excellent wide range of export options, including the ability to create BibTeX endnotes, handy for students and other researchers. The option to leave comments on other's bookmarks is very nice for "if you liked this..." type suggestions.
**Bad:** The organizational options on Furl are limited to tags and there are no thumbnail screen captures.
**Overall:** Furl has a very nice feature set and excellent export options.
Wired News rating: 7
**StumbleUpon**
StumbleUpon is the most unique of the bookmarking sites we looked at. As its name implies, StumbleUpon takes social bookmarking into the realm of randomness -- instead of searching, you stumble. Of course you can search too, but StumbleUpon makes it easy and fun to randomly jump around the web. The biggest downside to StumbleUpon is that it requires the installation of a toolbar which is only available for IE and Mozilla browsers.
**Good:** StumbleUpon is an addictive, fun way to browse the web and store your bookmarks. It also has some good bookmark organization options not seen on other sites.
**Bad:** StumbleUpon loses points for requiring the installation of a toolbar. As with some others, there are no thumbnails and no page caching.
**Overall:** StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site, but it's also much more. Recommended for those who've been spending all their time in an RSS reader and those with time to kill.
Wired News rating: 6
**BlinkList**
Started in June of last year, BlinkList has already gained quite a following and will likely appeal to people looking for a way to display link or tags on their blog, MySpace and other pages. BlinkList will give you Javascript widgets to show both links and tags, just cut-and-paste the provided code into your page.
**Good:** All these sites offer one-click bookmarking, but only BlinkList will autofill the description field with whatever text you highlight on the bookmarked page. BlinkList can also import bookmarks from a number of competing sites and offers thumbnails for all your pages.
**Bad:** BlinkList offers no backend API and has limited export options.
**Overall** BlinkList has come a long way in a short time and if it continues to add features and gain new users, it could well overtake del.icio.us.
Wired News rating: 7
**Ma.gnolia**
Ma.gnolia works very similar to del.icio.us and offers almost all the same basic features but it adds a few more. Like some of the others, Ma.gnolia allows you to rate your bookmarks using a 5 star rating system (very similar to NetFlix). Ma.gnolia also recently added a feature they call "roots." Roots is a javascript bookmarklet that you can save in your browser and when you're on a page, just click the bookmarklet and a javascript window will overlay the page and display how many ma.gnolia users have linked to that site and give their ratings and descriptions of the site.
**Good:** Ma.gnolia is essentially del.icio.us with a better design and handful of additional features. It offers screen captures and page caches for all bookmarks and has the most robust backend API of the bunch. It even offers an API that mirrors that of del.icio.us so add-on tools that work with del.icio.us can work with ma.gnolia as well.
**Bad:** Your organizational options are limited to tags and groups in ma.gnolia and while the interface design is easy on the eye, some may find it slower than del.icio.us.
**Overall:** Ma.gnolia seems to be popular with those looking to do more with their bookmarks like pull them into a blog or other page.
Wired News rating: 8
**OnlyWire**
Finally, for those that can't make up their mind, Monkey Bites readers suggested OnlyWire. OnlyWire doesn't store any bookmarks, instead it provides a bookmarklet for saving bookmarks and then it takes your page and whatever descriptive info you fill in and submits it to up to seventeen other bookmarking sites.
Just provide your sign in name and password for all your social bookmark sites and you can simultaneously maintain bookmarks on seventeen sites. And if that's not enough you can send OnlyWire a note asking them to add your favorite site.
The main downside to the OnlyWire method is you can only submit the information that is common to all sites, namely, a url, title, description and tags.
Wired News rating: 7
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