ReadWriteWeb

Disclaimer: I am testing out Trailfire as part of a consulting agreement. Full details below.

At the beginning of September I posted about Trailfire, a unique social bookmarking service that reminded me at the time of Vannevar Bush's 1945 pre-hypertext concept The Memex. Essentially what Trailfire does is enable you to place annotations on any web page and link related web pages to form a trail, or navigation path.

About a month after my initial post, the Trailfire team contacted me with a consulting proposal to try out a custom trail mark on my blog - one designed specifically for Read/WriteWeb. The idea was that this would enable me to provide branded navigation trails on my blog. I thought this sounded like a nice 'value add' feature, that readers might find interesting. Also trails / hypertextual navigation is a concept that I am very interested in experimenting with - so I agreed. But to be perfectly clear and transparent, I am being paid my regular consulting fee to try out Trailfire and report back to them.

As part of the experiment I will be using Trailfire on this blog, to provide related information via trails. Basically this is a totally optional feature for you, the reader. If you don't download the Trailfire product, then you will notice absolutely no difference to Read/WriteWeb. Of course if you do download Trailfire to follow my "trails", then I hope you will discover more relevant content - and what's more, contribute your own trails if you feel so inclined. Look for the little red pin (see screenshot below) - every time you see it roll your mouse over it to view the note.

In our recent Social Bookmarking Faceoff, we discovered that social bookmarking site StumbleUpon actually has more users than the more hyped del.icio.us. Currently StumbleUpon has 1,375,696 users, according to its About page. Recently del.icio.us announced it had reached 1 million users. I grew even more curious about StumbleUpon's success after reading the comments on a recent post of ours, where a few StumbleUpon users left almost mystical comments about the product: "I became a Stumbler in order to learn more about the world [and] it has been invaluable", noted one commenter.

To discover more about the mysterious StumbleUpon, I interviewed co-founder and Chief Architect Garrett Camp. In this post, Garrett describes StumbleUpon as a "personalized content discovery" service and outlines how it has grown to the million plus users it has today. Interestingly, he says that nearly half their user base is outside the US and more than a third are over the age of 35!

In other highlights, Garrett muses on the serendipity of SU and the "social interaction that emerges from using StumbleUpon". We also hear about StumbleUpon's future plan to become "your guide to the web, a community-based discovery tool". Finally Garrett notes a new feature called "Stumble it!" - which lets people submit and review sites without installing the SU toolbar.

I recently interviewed del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter, who is now with Yahoo after the popular social bookmarking service was acquired last December. Joshua was recently named as top innovator of the year by MIT Technology Review Magazine. Tagging is one example of an innovation that del.icio.us pioneered (at least in its current form). Joshua told me that "del.icio.us was the first app to showcase tagging" and that now "practically everyone uses tags in the [del.icio.us] system in some form."

But Joshua has bigger plans for del.icio.us - it will essentially turn into a social network, with more focus on people instead of data. I learned this when I asked Joshua what kind of new functionality we can expect to see from delicious over the coming 6-12 months? Joshua replied:

"One of the amazing things about our users is how smart and far-reaching their interests are. While delicious previously has been very much about just the data, in the future I hope to allow our users themselves to come forward within the system. Additionally, I want to help people connect with others within the system, either to people they already know or discovering new people and communities based on interest."
(emphasis mine)

This points to a social networking future for del.icio.us, perhaps more so than a content bookmarking one (which it currently is). delicious already has a 'Your network' feature, but that basically just connects users' bookmarks. I think what Joshua is talking about is expanding this into a more full-featured social networking system - with commenting, groups, etc. Perhaps similar to Imeem, which combines content browsing with social networking.

It's interesting to compare Joshua's thoughts here to our previous post on Read/WriteWeb - Social Networking: Time For A Silver Bullet. In that post Ebrahim Ezzy talked about how "numerous social networks will proliferate - each with unique form and function." So it's easy to see how a social network based on bookmarking, a la delicious, can thrive.

Comparing del.icio.us to StumbleUpon

Recently on Read/WriteWeb we did a post comparing the top social bookmarking services, which showed that del.icio.us was behind StumbleUpon in terms of users. del.icio.us announced a couple of weeks ago that they have 1,000,000 users, while StumbleUpon claims 1,271,345. I asked Joshua what he thought the differences were between del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. He replied:

"Delicious is about extending memory and saving things for yourselves and others. Stumbleupon is much more about surfing, like TV, or maybe Tivo."

I also asked about del.icio.us' growth and how they've managed the scaling process. Joshua told me that "because of the explosive growth, we're are always working on scaling", however they are "extremely happy with delicious' growth to this point".

The real interest though is in how delicious makes the transition from a content-focused site, to one where people are more to the fore. I look forward to seeing how Joshua and his team implement social networking features into del.icio.us.

I guess this is a sign of the times - a site dedicated to gaming digg, called User/Submitter. But there's no reason such a site couldn't exist for del.icio.us, or stumbleupon, or netscape - or any site that relies on voting. Needless to say, I hope this site gets squashed ASAP - it's at the same pond scum level as the RSS Ripoff Merchants, in my book...

On the 'Submit' page, it states:

"Cost: $20, plus $1 per Digg.

After completing the form below, you will be taken to PayPal. Once your PayPal payment is received, your Digg submission will be given to User/Submitter users to promote on Digg.com.

User/Submitter users are then given the chance to digg your submission and other stories for $0.50. After your submission has reached your desired number of diggs, you will be emailed a report.

We cannot guarantee that your submissions will hit the front page of Digg. We reserve the right to reject or cancel any submission for any reason.

If User/Submitter is unable to fulfill your requested number of verified diggs within 48 hours, you will be refunded the amount of Diggs paid for but not received within 5 working days.

All User/Submitter transactions are private."

And on the 'User' page it has a registration form, plus a note: "Pay-out: $0.50 per Digg."

No word on how many users they have right now, but looks like it set up shop just recently. I seriously doubt it will work anyway.

We hear a lot about digg, Slashdot and del.icio.us as traffic drivers for media websites and blogs. But one site that doesn't get enough props in this regard is StumbleUpon. In our recent Social Bookmarking Faceoff, we noted that StumbleUpon has the largest user base with 1,271,345 users. Its main rival in the space, del.icio.us, recently announced it had reached 1 million users.

StumbleUpon is basically a browser plugin which makes it very easy to submit and vote on websites. Simply download the plugin (Firefox or IE) and then click the "I like it!" icon to 'stumble' a webpage. Once a link has been submitted, it can propagate out to the large community of SU users in a very viral way.

Neil Patel, who has given me a lot of excellent advice about website optimization, recently wrote a post entitled How to get StumbledUpon. It's a great introduction to StumbleUpon and a must-read. In fact, subscribe to Neil's blog if this kind of thing interests you.

I can attest to the power of StumbleUpon - our most popular post over the past couple of months (according to my Google Analytics service) has been Top 10 Firefox Web 2.0 Add-ons. Usually our top posts are ones that have had the fortune to be Slashdotted or dugg. But this one got neither. Instead, 27% of its traffic was driven by StumbleUpon and 14% by del.icio.us. And the flow from StumbleUpon continues. I have to admit though that it's one of only a few R/WW posts to have been stumbled in a big way, so like digg and Slashdot it's not something publishers can expect on a regular basis.

StumbleUpon is yet another example of a Web-based community that has gained a significant user base in a seemingly short period of time. Check it out!

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.

The social bookmarking market is in a steady state with two dominant players - del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. The rest of the pack, including Yahoo MyWeb, appears to be substantially behind. Will they catch up? In this post we attempt to answer that question.

We also take a look at how social bookmarking has evolved since del.icio.us. (even del.icio.us itself has evolved a lot!). We compare the features and approaches of the different companies, to see which has gained popularity and what has become the norm in this space.

A short history of social bookmarking

The current social web era started with del.icio.us and the advent of social bookmarking. The simple concept of a tag has turned our interactions with the web upside down. The idea of being able to store your bookmarks online, share them with everyone and see what others have bookmarked - triggered the sequence of events that resulted in today's rich and social web ecosystem.

We used the e-consultant and go2web20 lists of social bookmarking services to select the companies. Note that we did not include any company with an Alexa rank of less than 100,000. We also did not profile social news sites (like digg) or social shopping sites (like Kaboodle), as they will be profiled in separate R/WW posts.

Feature comparison

Note: Mouse over the column headings to see full text

Site	Imp	Pop Rec	Rel Dir	Frd	Rat	Pri	Tag sug	RSS	Wid	Brw	API	Pros	Cons
BlinkList Alexa: 3,600 Technorati: 63,794	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x		BlinkSpaces - create a community out of your links, nice browser toolbar, all and all really nice.	A few broken links in places, a bit underdesigned for my taste.
Blogmarks Alexa: 9,000 Technorati: 48,331	x	x		x		x						Nicely designed, generate a post of your bookmarks for your blog	Seems incomplete compare to other sites. Injects ads. Crashed several times during my tests.
del.icio.us Alexa: 155 Technorati: 1,597,818	x	x	x	x		x	x	x	x	x	x	Easy to use, intelligent, tons of useful features, not in your face	Not fancy, might not appeal to the main stream.
Site	Imp	Pop Rec	Rel Dir	Frd	Rat	Pri	Tag sug	RSS	Wid	Brw	API	Pros	Cons
diigo Alexa: 13,750 Technorati: 2,262	x	x	x			x	x	x	x	x		Post to other bookmarking services, supports annotations with sticky notes, flexible blog integration.	A lot of options, might not be easy to learn for everyone, mixes a lot of things together.
Furl Alexa: 2,400 Technorati: 126,000	x	x	x	x	x	x		x	x	x		Has archiving, simple browser add-on, has some additional options associated with the post.	Lacks related items, could use a re-design.
Ma.gnolia Alexa: 9.400 Technorati: 82,800	x	x		x	x	x	x	x	x		x	Beautiful design, nice implementation of groups, well thought through	Does not look very active, lack of browser add-ons and imports, lacks unique features.
MyWeb Alexa: 1 (for Yahoo!) Technorati: 76,000	x	x		x		x	x	x	x	x	x	Nice look and feel, could work for main stream.	Too many things in the toolbar, falls short of del.icio.us on many features.
Site	Imp	Pop Rec	Rel Dir	Frd	Rat	Pri	Tag sug	RSS	Wid	Brw	API	Pros	Cons
Shadows Alexa: 13,000 Technorati: 11,140	x	x		x	x	x		x	x	x	x	Fairly comprehensive set of features, clean design	Popular is done by tags instead of by links, site is somewhat slow, does not feel as connected as del.icio.us
Simpy Alexa: 14,600 Technorati: 35,000	x	x	x	x		x	x		x	x	x	Instantly view current page history, browser export	Could use UI improvements, no popular links, similar links are not cross users, too many first level menues in Firefox extension
StumbleUpon Alexa: 617 Technorati: 33,500		x		x	x				x	x		A different approach, that seems to be successful, given the number of users. Nice browser toolbar.	Would be great to have directory and browse related.

Estimating the number of users

Companies typically do not reveal the number of users and activity, but we can do educated estimates. In a recent post on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington stated that there are about 53 million posts on del.icio.us. Based on the statistics mentioned at the time of the del.icio.us acquisition (by Yahoo) in December 2005, and the growth since then, we estimate the current number of people using del.icio.us at 500,000 [UPDATE since this post was first published, del.icio.us announced they have 1,000,000 users]. From this we conclude that the average user on del.icio.us did a little over 100 posts. This is a pretty impressive number, although it might be the case that there is a fat tail and a handful of users with a huge number of posts.

If we use 100 posts per user as a guide then, we can do similar estimates for other social bookmarking companies. For example, since Blogmarks has a total of 514,205 posts, we estimate that they have roughly 5,000 users.

Here is another interesting angle... a search on Yahoo MyWeb for items tagged "food" results in 7,200 bookmarks. A similar search on BlinkList brings up 120 pages with 20 items per page - or 2.400 bookmarks. In other words, the number of posts tagged with a particular word or term can be used as another relative measure of the number of users.

Finally, here is another method for estimating the number of users. We took a recently popular web2.0 list url: go2web20.net, as well as all time favorite CNN.com, and looked at how many people have bookmarked these on various services. If we do this for a hundred or so randomly choosen URLs, we would get more precise estimates - but this is just to give us an approximation of the number of users. Here is a table showing our results:

NB: With MyWeb, the estimated users is 114,600. As it turns out we can't compute it with the same method, because information is not quite there. Instead, we used the Tag Comparison method and compared it with BlinkList.

Conclusion

The social bookmarking market is dominated by del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. These leaders split the market, as they bring orthogonal approaches to bookmarking - del.icio.us builds a hierarchy for people to browse (it does related relationships, etc.), while StumbleUpon is more of a random discovery system.

Meanwhile the other players in this market have a lot of ground to make up on the two leaders, based on our analysis in this post.

Update: Added Furl - thanks to Barry Dahl for pointing it out (comment #3).

Update 20/9/06: More updates to the tables and figures above, based on comments.

Update 5/10/06: Updated del.icio.us figure in the main text.