Bookmarking Services Just as Tasty as Delicious

Well, back in August of 2010, I sang the praises of Yahoo!’s product, Delicious, a free, web-based, social bookmarking service. In December of that same year, rumors started to emerge that Delicious was a part of Yahoo!’s “sunset list” (i.e., no longer a fit in Yahoo!’s strategic plan). According to news earlier this week, Delicious has found a new home with YouTube's founders, Chad Hurley and Steven Chen's Internet company, AVOS. There is an informative Delicious page, answering frequently asked questions about the AVOS transition. There are promises of a smooth transistion and maintaining Delicious' beloved services, and many will probably stay with Delicious through the transition. I thought it best, however, to follow up my original post with instructions to backup/save your Delicious bookmarks, as well as a few alternatives to Delicious.

First of all, you'll want to export/backup your Delicious bookmarks as a file to your computer! Here's a quick video showing the steps to successfully backup your bookmarks:

Next, you'll want to select a bookmarking service to import your beloved bookmarks, and there are numerous options out there! The following three, however, are services that I have used myself, which allow me to access my bookmarks from any computer with Internet access, using any browser:

Diigo: Diigo has a lot more flash than Delicious, but it offers the same basic functions (ability to save bookmarks as private, add keywords/descriptors to my bookmarks, etc.), which drew me to Delicious. Diigo allows users to configure their account settings to automatically post new Diigo bookmarks to their Delicious account (i.e., an instant backup file).

Google Bookmarks: If you already have a Google account, you’re set to go. You may have already been using it without even knowing! If you’ve ever “starred” a search result while using Google, it’s already been saved into Google Bookmarks. Google recently created a Delicious Bookmark Importer, which makes it amazingly easy to migrate from Delicious to Google Bookmarks.

Pinboard: Pinboard is a streamlined, no fuss approach to social bookmarking. The service, however, is not free. Currently, the one-time fee to open a Pinboard account is just under ten dollars.

Again, Delicious will continue service via AVOS, but it's *always* a good idea to create a backup file of your bookmarks for safe keeping!

- Anna, Hopewell Branch