BlinkList, A New Bookmarker
Mike from the Mindvalley Blog commented on a post of mine about Social Bookmarking, pointing me to what seems to be his flagship product, BlinkList.
I’ve spent a few moments going over it, and wanted to post my initial reactions. Initial. Reactions.
So take those two words for everything they are. Initial because I haven’t had any time to experience what the site has to offer past the first. Reaction because that’s what happens. We experience something and we react. End Rant/Disclaimer.
BlinkList has a lot of functionality. It seems to combine bits from Digg, Slashdot and Del.icio.us all into one. There is the bookmarking, the ranking (Blinking in this case), the elements of getting to the front page, and the cool ajax functionality.
I guess something that is exciting is that you can get to the front page pretty easily at the moment. Only a few Blinks are required. At least, that’s what it looks like if you click on the “Hot Now” tab.
The Tag Cloud is nice. It’s colored, as well as the size and opacity functionality that I discovered recently using Wordpress plugins. The Tag Cloud is a cool thing. And is probably what the Live Plasma originated as. Well, I guess that’s what it is, just with a fluffy exterior. Just looking, and BlinkList doesn’t have the opacity going on for the tag cloud. So strike that off the list. Just the size and the colors.
Something that just occured to me is that soon, saying “cool ajax functionality” won’t mean squat. At least, in the current understanding. Soon, sites are going to have desktop functionality as a matter of course, so then all the desktop development/design issues that we’ve been dealing with for years will become a real element in designing a website.
Which, when you think about it, is a good thing for people with desktop development experience. In fact, you could hypothesise, that in the next few years, having a good understanding of how to put together desktop apps, the pitfalls, the strengths, will give you a greater leverage within the web development world.
I might just be blowing steam. We’ll see.
Anyway, BlinkList. I think it’s probably got the elements, so time will tell. I’ve got my years of being in the gaming industry to tell me that just because a game has all the elements doesn’t mean it’s gonna fly (Troika, Looking Glass, …). And that crap will most probably move more units (lots of EA drivel, some Interplay, a lot of the big franchise games).
Initial Thoughts (short) :: Over.
cool is nice - but how useful are all these things? how often are you using them repeatedly in your daily experience - where are the examples of this?
There is plenty of bling bling
It is sometimes hard to hear
Sounds of useful function ring
A world void of use I fear
Comment by Adam — December 9, 2005 @ 11:51 am
Nice prose. I guess if you thought that spending your days working the social bookmark world (visiting the sites, ranking things, etc etc), then all that functionality would be useful to you. It just depends how into it you are.
Comment by Stu — December 9, 2005 @ 12:11 pm
Thanks for taking the time to write about BlinkList! We are always excited when our community members take the time to write about the impressions they get from using our service. Would love to hear your thoughts once you have spend more time with it. I also completely agree with your comment regarding ajax and desktop apps. It is all about the user experience and will have to keep making it better and better.
It is also sad but true that often “the crap does move more units.” We are still small compared to the majors but in time I hope this will take care of itself as we continue to deliver an excellent user experience for personal or social bookmarking. Hope to hear what your reactions are once you have had more time to spend with the product. Mike
Comment by Mike — December 9, 2005 @ 1:27 pm
I guess if you thought that spending your days working the social bookmark world (visiting the sites, ranking things, etc etc), then all that functionality would be useful to you.
For what ultimate purpose? And would it? Why is it useful? That has not really been explained or sold to me in these articles/posts. If I’m someone who values my time - give reasons why one should invest it in these things? These questions are as valid - or even more so - than a feature list or a “wow this is cool”.
The step above an idea - is evaluating it. As it is in system design - as it is in life. The antithesis to this is feature creep and design paralysis.
Comment by Adam — December 10, 2005 @ 12:55 am
Ha ha. Just because you don’t join the feverish masses of people who start a blog to become famous doesn’t mean others won’t.
You have to remember, people will go to these things because they want their blog to become famous, a chance at fame. Or they’ll go to see if they can learn anything new. Or they’ll go to see if there is anything to see about the fuss being made. Or perhaps they’ll go and hang around and become part of the collective group for that particular bookmarking site.
It’s happening. Look at Digg, Slashdot (sort of), Delicious, this one, and others.
I didn’t write this post to convince people to use the service. People just will. I found out about these sites initially because I wanted pimp Dev Dawn as hard as I could.
I agree that we have to evaluate, take a look out of the bubble, don’t get on the hype machine. Although I’m sure I’ll become a fan-boy of at least three more things this month … but I’m finding now that I’m visiting places like this to do just that … evaluate, see what they offer, and then write some kind of opinionated piece about it.
Turning into a journalist of sorts I guess … a very minor one.
So yeah, these sites are useful because for people wanting access to a community, they give it. They are useful for those people who want to grasp at a chance to promote whatever their own thoughts are, or the thoughts of others. And they are useful for us, because they promote “discussion”.
Comment by Stu — December 10, 2005 @ 1:30 am
High level answer to the question. I would in your posts/articles like to see more low level examples of usefullness. Just a suggestion.
I’ll point out the reason Google was successful - they ignored all the “cool” let’s go do this, let’s go do that, let’s get into bed with these ppl - and focused on pretty much one thing. Make their search engine the most useful. And it is. The reason I and many others just said “google it” was because it was the one that would return useful results first more often than other search engines.
Google Talk seems again to take the same approach - of a kind - focus on the most useful aspects, do them well, and don’t get distracted.
As for the rest of the Google Empire - well perhaps they are starting to lose focus? But I’m refering to the past success of the Google search engine here as a prime example of functionality (how well features work) and usefullness (how these features help people) being king.
Comment by Adam — December 10, 2005 @ 10:25 am
Ha ha. High level. Nice. I can only appeal to the higher level maybe … not sure.
Just because I’m stubborn, i don’t want to bend to your will … i wasn’t writing this post to try and make people “like” or use the particular product … i was just reporting initial thoughts on it. So there was no intention of convincing anyone.
But, I do understand that a good piece of writing on a blog should probably look at a number of different things, particularly usefulness.
Here’s to discussion.
Comment by Stu — December 10, 2005 @ 3:35 pm
Well - that’s my take on analysis on technology and it’s in keeping with good system design and can apply to the web too!
Just had a look at your userid on the system - 96 posts! Prolific
Go 100 - special post!
http://www.devdawn.com/wp-admin/edit.php?author=2
Comment by Adam — December 10, 2005 @ 3:45 pm
Hmmm, i wonder what could be talked about in the 100th. Maybe look back at the good times, the last 100 episodes … i mean … errr … posts.
Comment by Stu — December 10, 2005 @ 4:26 pm
Like one of those tv “review” episodes where the cast all take a week off - new poll, should they be banned.
And another milestone - 10th comment!
Comment by Adam — December 12, 2005 @ 10:31 am