Yahoo unveils new Bookmarks site to replace MyWeb

Filed under: Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software

Yahoo unveils new Bookmarks site to replace MyWeb

by Chris Price Oct 25th 2006

Finally, Yahoo admits that it's venerable Bookmark service is in need of an update and is about to unveil a new beta version.

To compete with the other big guys (Google Bookmarks & Windows Live Favorites), this release will bring the following:

Advanced search functionality
Thumbnails for quickly recognizing sites
Convenient drag-and-drop management
Organize bookmarks with folders and tags
Ability to save page content along with the URL
Editing abilities when saving
An end to the 1000 bookmark limit

For those of us that are regular users of MyWeb, this list will look awfully familiar - it reads like a decent enhancement of the 'social bookmarking for the masses' service that's been out for a while now.

However, the post from the team mentions this:

"Yahoo! Bookmarks will focus on personal saving, organization, and recovery while our comrades at del.icio.us will concentrate on meeting your social bookmarking and sharing needs. For users of MyWeb, your bookmarks are safe, and in a few months you'll be able to roll over to either Yahoo! Bookmarks or del.icio.us."

I'm not sure how I feel about this - I use both MyWeb and del.icio.us, and MyWeb is clearly the easier of the 2 (especially with the integration of Yahoo 360). That said, I am happy that they have thrown their support over the acquisition as it matures.

More details and screenshots can be found on Techcrunch. If you want to try it yourself, it's available here...

Tags: beta, bookmarks, del.icio.us, myweb, update, yahoo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kenny said 12:15PM on 10-25-2006

Yahoo Bookmarks has been the Yahoo property I have relied upon the most over the years. It is good - and surprising - to see this vintage service getting some serious attention at last.

It looks as if the merger is between MyWeb and Bookmarks, rather than MyWeb and Del.icio.us, though those following the prompt towards del.ico.us from MyWeb ought to find it painless, assuming that del.icio.us getting caching abilities some time soon. It seems odd that after this there will *still* be two Yahoo properties offering such similar services though.

I wouldn't describe Google Bookmarks or Windows Live Favorites as "big guys" in this field. Google's service barely matches Yahoo's original bookmarks service, and Microsoft's offering is good on options but clunky and slow when carrying them out.

So how about Yahoo looking at their Briefcase service next?

Chris Price said 12:23PM on 10-25-2006

I think they've taken aspects of MyWeb and added them to Bookmarks, and the overlapping social aspects will be left with del.icio.us.

While I'm happy to see Bookmarks get some love, I'm not sure I can choose which way to move MyWeb to - I did do the Import, but all those pages are now Uncategorized (but still tagged). I'll have to work with it more to see how the social side search integration is working before committing to either of the remaining services.

By 'big guys', I didn't mean the services from them - just that MS and Google had both entered the online bookmarking arena that Yahoo has had for years.

I agree with you and Briefcase - if they can drop that before the fabled GDrive hits, I'd love it (although I'd rather see a new Calendar first...)

Aravindh said 12:34PM on 10-26-2006

I tried the beta site and found that my bookmark folder structure does not show up. It will be very annoying if I need to recreate my complete folder structure.

Kenny said 7:44PM on 11-02-2006

I imported my del.icio.us bookmarks to my empty "myweb" pages tonight, and found that the same pages had suddenly populated my empty beta.bookmarks pages, so its seems these two services already overlap. Indeed, beta bookmarks has been built to be MyWeb with thumbnails and without sharing, based on this experiment.

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