Ari Paparo, the creator of a website tagging solution called blink.com (1999) shares his thoughts on how del.ico.us succeeded where Blink did not. It's insightful.
Tagging (simply stated) is a new website surfing technology focused around communities of individuals sharing bookmarks. I'll add a 'brief overview' on it soon...
When I was with a startup called CampusEngine I met with Backflip, a competitor of Blink. We developed a publishing technology for college newspapers (and gave it away for free. Don't ask) and were interested in integrating anything that would bring and keep students online. After a meet-and-greet and demo I liked the tool. Simply put, it helped you organize (tag) information on the web. As it relates to networks of people sharing their opinions and ideas however, I remember backflip as something I would use as an individual, not necessarily share with friends and colleagues.
This is not to say there wasn't a social or sharing component to Backflip, but the pitch didn't draw my attention to that aspect. I probably would have responded to a "social glue" message; my job was building social networks of students on college campuses around the online campus newspaper. Students like ‘social’ almost as much as (ahem) ‘sharing,’ and I was after pageviews, so that would have been a fit. Perhaps Backflip was guessing (or getting feedback from the market) that the most valuable aspect of their tool was personal organization. Great people at Backflip, by the way.
Ha ha...I chuckled when I read this:
"We developed a publishing technology for college newspapers (and gave it away for free. Don't ask)"
--A former CE'er
Posted by: Corey | February 09, 2006 at 03:36 PM
I like the idea of suggesting related items - like Amazon's "People who have purchased this item also purchased..." and that sort of thing.
Anesthesia Machines
Posted by: Bay area web design | May 12, 2009 at 01:11 PM