antisocial bookmarking

Via Daring Fireball I just learned about Pinboard, which describes itself as “antisocial bookmarking.” I am tempted to use it rather than Delicious for just that reason. I think all that line really means is that it’s easy to make the default setting for your bookmarks “Private.” In other respects Pinboard is just a simpler, cleaner version of Delicious — I like its look very much — with one nice addition: instead of bookmarking pages you can choose “To Read,” which saves the page for later perusal. That makes Pinboard a kind of combination of Delicious and Instapaper, which makes a lot of sense. Here’s the other interesting thing about Pinboard: its developer, Maciej Ceglowski, has implemented a signup fee: “The signup fee helps discourage spammers and defrays some of the costs of running the site,” he writes. “The fee is based on the formula (number of users * $0.001), so the earlier you join, the less you pay.” When Gruber (the immensely popular Daring Fireball) signed up a few days ago, he paid $2.33. When I signed up yesterday, I paid $2.91. But I imagine a few thousand other Fireball readers did just the same, so this morning the price is $4.08. Quite a jump. If you’re interested in Pinboard you should get it while it’s not so hot. In general — and this takes us back to a recent post — I’d prefer to pay money for an online service, rather than use a monetarily free service for which I pay in other ways: for example, in privacy. So I’ll be playing with Pinboard for a few days and trying to decide whether my social or antisocial side has priority.

Text Patterns

July 14, 2009