Thumbtack: Microsoft Labs Launches New Bookmarking Service
Microsoft Labs today released Thumbtack, a new bookmarking application with a very slick user interface that represents an interesting take on bookmarking and saving online information, though it often falls short on delivering some of the basics that we have come to expect from online bookmarking services.
According to Microsoft, Thumbtack was developed based on user feedback the company received after releasing Listas in 2007. Unlike Listas, however, Thumbtack does not focus on social bookmarking but rather on creating online research collections. Thumbtack supports both IE7 and Firefox, though Firefox users miss out an a few interesting features.
Great Website - Bookmarklet Needs Work
One major disappointment of Thumbtack is its bookmarklet. While its concept of saving a full text copy of a site is great in theory (though not novel), the bookmarklet manages to mangle the text of the page with JavaScript and doesn't copy videos and images. The bookmarklet expects you to highlight the part of the text you want to save, though even then, you can't actually scroll through the text in the bookmarklet. One nice features, though, is that can also just copy and paste items into Thumbtack right from your web browser (or any other program, for that matter).
The actual Thumbtack site, however, is quite well designed and allows you to drag and drop items to different collections, edit and tag bookmarks, and share your bookmarks by email and through a public web site.
None of these features are novel, but the interface does make using the site very easy. One cool feature of the site is the 'gadget' view, which allows you to quickly plot addresses from all your collections on a map, or to create plots based on data in your bookmarks.
It is important to know, though, that Thumbtack is clearly still an alpha product. Sometimes, for example, the bookmarklet wouldn't recognize new collections we had created or published collections wouldn't appear on their respective public websites. That, however, is something we expect in an alpha product and can be easily remedied by Microsoft.
Better Alternatives
Earlier this week, we looked at Qitera, which has a feature set that is quite similar to Thumbtack's, but while Thumbtack has a more interesting user interface, the actual bookmarking and information retrieval through Qitera is far superior to Microsoft's product. Thumbtack also lacks any of the social bookmarking aspects that make Twine, Delicious, or Qitera interesting. Not everybody, of course, is interested in sharing bookmarks, and for those users, Thumbtack is definitely worth trying, though currently, we would recommend Qitera, Delicious, or Ma.gnolia, or the Google Notebook, over Thumbtack.
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i am still not able to use this service
why readwrite web has facebook connect ?
Ajay - would love to help you out, but I'm not sure I really get your question.
Posted by: Frederic
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December 10, 2008 7:49 PM
Frederic, Great Post!
Over the last several years I have covered or either worked with most of the bookmarking startups in noe way or another. From Secondbrain, to Diigo and way beyond - they all have one fatal flaw - the next generation of content aggregator. None of these , and probably not the MS or Google ones either, have really "wowed" anyone or at least ventured into anything beyond annotation and refined linkage.
I talked with Shawn Hardin of Flock the other day about just this - a browser like Flock - with the right innovation - could effectively put an end to all our talk about social bookmarking.
We have traversed the realm of remote server storage and community residing in the 2out there" only to discover that the desktop (for many applications) may yet be the ultimate conduit for community. With OpenID and Facebook variants of identity assurance and dynamics coming of age, combinations of our past tools put together with other elements might have been the answers all along.
Even FF or IE, with the right plug ins, could effectively make every desktop a "collection" within a huge matrix of desktops linked more simply via a browser. This idea goes a long way towards being agasint what we have come to expect from Web 2.0 platforms, but if you think about all this, maybe we were wrong. I am a little surprised no one at these companies has thought of this. Maybe I am an evil genius, or maybe not, but food for thought never the less.
Always,
Phil
P.S. Answer emails Frederic :)
Great article! All I needed to know was their recommendation. What a time saver compared to the old me - Trying everything under the sun.
How can any bookmarking article not include a comparison with Diigo? In my experience its the best tool for collaborative research or simply for bookmarking. It has more features than del.icio.us and its performance is consistently good. Perhaps visually its not as appealing, but it absolutely gets the job done.
Go with Qitera (or, perhaps Microsoft should buy Qitera). Wait: Google will buy Qitera and Microsoft will buy Radar Networks. Yeah, this scenario is more likely.
y, Diigo is hard to beat -- tried quite a few. have not found anything better
Good unbiased article and such a shame microsoft can't release a competitive product in that market. That could be a perfect way to step up in the search engine war.
I like the look of the interface, like a Web2.0 version of Delicious.
Posted by: Alastair Montgomery
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December 12, 2008 1:14 AM
Does not work in IE8 B2. Most MS-Centric early adopters (the kind who would try this service) would be using IE8 B2.
Posted by: Sanat Gersappa
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December 12, 2008 3:04 AM
Diigo gets my vote for best social bookmarking site. I too was surprised to see it not mentioned. I took a quick peek at delicious just now to see if it had caught up. Nope.
great
I like the look of the interface, like a Web2.0 version of Delicious.