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End of the Road for Xmarks

blog.xmarks.com

61–70 of 111 posts

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#61
post #26

Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone. It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to…

[deleted]

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#62

xMarks has an amazing set of data. A set of tagged bookmarks on a large enough scale is essentially like running mechanical turk (with 2,000,000 users) on the entire internet (better yet, only bookmark-worthy parts of the internet), and asking it to "describe this page in 10 words or less". The results, I think, are the most accurate description of URLs you could get on such a large scale. Essentially every site that…

Unfortunately, that dataset would only stay amazing until they tried to use it to power a search engine.

History has shown that any time user-generated content is shown to users, spammers will quickly set themselves up as the ones generating 99% of the content.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#63

xMarks has an amazing set of data. A set of tagged bookmarks on a large enough scale is essentially like running mechanical turk (with 2,000,000 users) on the entire internet (better yet, only bookmark-worthy parts of the internet), and asking it to "describe this page in 10 words or less". The results, I think, are the most accurate description of URLs you could get on such a large scale. Essentially every site that…

>>> Frankly, I don't understand what benefits "synchronizing" offers.

I use synchronizing in Chrome, and the benefit is convenience. I drag a link to a toolbar (for example some bookmarklet), and I see it on another computer, at the same place in the toolbar there. I also use Google bookmarks, but sync is more convenient.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#64
post #5

Wow, xmarks is dead because they couldn't "find a scalable business model" with two million users. http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850

Why don't the Pinboard folks buy out Xmarks?

What would they do that? The fact that Xmarks is closing doesn't mean they would have sold it for a few bucks. Not to mention that Pinboard is run just by two guys, as far as I know without any external investment.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#65
post #26

Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone. It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to…

I honestly didn't know xmarks existed, I probably missed it because I used to be more of an Opera user before Chrome with only a fleeting interest in Firefox inbetween. Firefox I moved to because of Weave, and I only fully shifted to Chrome when the sync became full-featured. Xmarks may not be able to compete within a single browser, but the killer play is syncing across them.

Having just read the feature list I would happily pay $5 per month for the secure password syncing across browsers.

The bookmarks have a little value to me, but the password syncing has pretty significant value.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#66
It's always sad when someone's dreams are shattered. But what I don't get is why a bookmark syncing service needs venture capital, employees, a CEO and whatnot. There may not be a business model that supports all that, but there may be a business model that pays for the labor actually required to provide a syncing service.

In a way this is like shutting down all the cafes that failed to become Starbucks.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#67

It's always sad when someone's dreams are shattered. But what I don't get is why a bookmark syncing service needs venture capital, employees, a CEO and whatnot. There may not be a business model that supports all that, but there may be a business model that pays for the labor actually required to provide a syncing service. In a way this is like shutting down all the cafes that failed to become Starbucks.

You don't get why a bookmark syncing service needs venture capital, employees, a CEO and what not?

Web applications don't just grow on trees ...

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#68
post #22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's because it creates an obligation for them to continue the service for a reasonable amount of time.

Fair point, but how about this: they've committed to 3 months anyway, so why not try charging for 3 months? Just don't touch the money coming in during that period. If they reach the end of that time, and it's not working, issue refunds and shut down. There is some cost to this (transaction fees etc), but seemingly minimal compared to other running costs they've already committed to (because if it fails, the number o…

do you have use xmarks?

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#69
Aren't there several YC companies who do searches of browsing history?

At the moment I rely on Firefox awesome bar, but I have a nagging feeling that it is not reliable (keep not finding sites I was sure I had bookmarked). So a better way to search and organize bookmarks is still being called for.

I can't imagine that there isn't a market for better bookmarking...

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#70

I, for one, am extremely disappointed to hear this news. I use Xmarks extensively on chrome and firefox across 3 computers. It is so easy to setup and use. I've never managed to get the Chrome sync working as it always hangs up and never finishes setting up. I think I'd have paid for Xmarks as a service.

have you tried it in latest beta-branch? it's gotten a lot of features in the last month or so.
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