The Best Delicious Alternatives: Social Bookmarking, Social Curation, and More
Help Me Make This More Useful
Please help me make this list more useful to you by sharing the most important feature of the old Delicious for your needs:
What was the old Delicious's most important feature for you?
Delicious.com (formerly known as del.icio.us) has had a turbulent history. One of the pioneers of both Web 2.0 and social bookmarking, Delicious was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. Delicious was largely neglected by Yahoo!, which never quite seemed to figure out what it wanted to do with it.
Then, in December 2010, an internal slide from a Yahoo! meeting leaked onto the web, purporting to show that Delicious was to be "sunsetted." Over the next few days and weeks, there was an uproar among Delicious's dedicated user base, which was understandably upset about the prospect of as much as 7 years of data vanishing into the ether. For awhile, it looked as though Delicious might be shut down for good, but in April 2011, Yahoo! announced that it was selling Delicious to Avos Systems, a company created by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, two of the co-founders of YouTube.
In September 2011, there was another uproar in the user base when the new owners relaunched the site overnight, introducing a new feature called "stacks" and a few other tweaks, but breaking much of the core functionality of the site. Among other things, the browser extensions, API, and RSS feeds were broken, the popular tag bundles feature disappeared entirely, and users found themselves unable to view more than 10 links with any particular tag. As of this writing, it remains to be seen how many of these useful features will ever be restored to their previous level of functionality.
The Delicious Product Team has started a new blog to help keep users updated as new fixes roll out: Delicious Beta Status. Meanwhile, if you are one of the many users unhappy with the changes, here is a list of more than 50 Delicious alternatives:
The Top Two Delicious Alternatives
The two most popular Delicious alternatives are Pinboard and Diigo.
Pinboard.in is the site that comes closest to replicating the appearance and basic features of the old Delicious, so it is a great choice for most unhappy Delicious users. However, it lacks tag bundles and costs a one-time fee to use.
EDIT: As of 08/20/2012, Pinboard now offers tag bundles! In my opinion, this makes it the clear front runner for anyone looking for a Delicious alternative.
Diigo is a more established site than Pinboard and has been one of Delicious's top competitors for years. Like Pinboard, it does not offer tag bundles, but it does offer most of the other basic functions of Delicious, plus some neat extra features, such as the ability to highlight parts of a website, that make it an especially good option for academic researchers and students.
Both Pinboard and Diigo can import bookmarks from Delicious. Go to your Settings page on the new Delicious to export your bookmarks.
More Delicious Alternatives
There is an incredible array of social bookmarking and social curation options on the web, each with different features and a different focus. Since each Delicious user's needs vary, I've tried to include a good representative sample of the options below, but it will be up to you to determine which one best meets your own needs. For example, if Delicious-style tag bundles are critical for you, you may want to check out Mister Wong.
I have marked sites that I recommend with asterisks (***). Please note that recommended sites do not necessarily duplicate the features of Delicious best, but offer an established community, innovative features, or other benefits comparable to the old Delicious.
A1-Webmarks has basic bookmarking features but a rather unattractive design, in my opinion.
BagTheWeb allows you to collect links, images, and videos into multimedia collections called "bags," which resemble the new Delicious "stacks."
BibSonomy allows you to save both bookmarks and publications, and may be useful for academic researchers and students.
Blinklist allows you to bookmark and save webpages for offline viewing.
BlogMarks is an invitation-only social bookmarking service.
Bookmarks2 is a personal bookmarking tool that bills itself as "simple, not social."
Brainify is a bookmarking tool aimed specifically at college students and faculty.
BuddyMarks is a bookmarking tool that resembles Digg in format.
Bundlr is a visual bookmarking tool that allows you to bundle links together in a format similar to the new Delicious "stacks."
Clipboard allows you to clip, organize, and share web content. NOTE - As of June 30, 2013, the Clipboard service has been purchased by salesforce.com and discontinued.
ClipMarks allows you to clip text, images, and videos from the web and share them.
***Connotea is a well-established bookmarking tool aimed at the academic and research communities, with some useful reference management features.
Curated.by allows you to save tweets, links, and media focused on a particular topic into a "bundle."
***Digg has had its own share of problems with ill-thought-out relaunches and angry users, but remains a popular site for bookmarking and sharing content such as news articles and blog posts.
Etceter - description coming soon
***Evernote is a popular note-taking app that allows you to clip and save parts of websites and can double as a private bookmarking tool.
FAVable is a bookmarking service with easy Twitter integration.
Favbot removes the need for manual bookmarking by indexing every site you visit, creating your own personal Google for content you've visited.
Favebucket - description coming soon
Faveous can automatically collect links you post to Twitter, Google Reader, and more, as well as having standard bookmarking features.
Faves is a good basic social bookmarking tool.
Faviki is a social bookmarking website with a unique tagging system that connects tags to Wikipedia concepts to share more information.
Favilous is a relatively new site that puts a lot of focus on a simple, attractive design.
Flinkin is a bookmarking tool developed in Spain.
Folkd is a bookmarking tool with a somewhat Digg-like interface.
Foomark is a social bookmarking site with some game-like elements, including "guilds," coins, and rewards.
Gimmie Bar allows you to clip and save text, images, and videos from the web, and sync with your DropBox to save them permanently.
***Google Bookmarks is not as feature-rich as Delicious, but offers the convenience of a single log-in if you use Gmail, Google+, or other Google features.
Historius offers both free and paid subscriptions and stores a cached version of the pages you bookmark exactly as they are when you bookmark them.
iKeepBookmarks offers basic bookmarking features.
Instapaper is neither designed for nor suited to saving thousands of links, but if you use Delicious primarily as temporary storage for links you plan to read later, Instapaper may be the perfect service for you!
JumpTags is a bookmarking service for web content including links and RSS feeds.
Keeeb allows to you clip parts of webpages and organize them onto topic pages.
Kippt is a very attractive new social bookmarking service developed in Finland.
LibGuides is a service specifically for libraries that allows librarians to create "guides" to various topics, including text, links, and media.
Licorize is a bookmarking tool with some unique project management features, such as the ability to set a type for the bookmark (idea, to-do, goal, reminder, regular bookmark, etc.) and assign it to a particular team member or project.
LinCut is a simple bookmarking service.
Linkable allows you to create shortcuts to all your favorite sites on a single page.
linkaGoGo is a social bookmarking service with some interesting features, including the ability to be reminded to visit a certain link again.
LinkCloud is a bookmarking tool that allows you to arrange your bookmarks visually.
LinkPager allows you to organize your links into collections called LinkPages, which are similar to Delicious's new "stacks" feature.
MammothHQ - description coming soon
Memit - description coming soon
Memonic allows you to clip and save content from the web.
***Mister Wong is a popular, established social bookmarking site with a fairly similar set of features to Delicious, including tag bundles! However, it a paid service.
MyBookmarks is an established bookmarking site that allows you to group your bookmarks into folders.
MyLinkVault is a bookmarking service with a drag-and-drop interface.
Netvouz is a bookmarking tool that allows you to arrange your bookmarks into folders and tags.
oneview was one of the first social bookmarking websites but never became as popular as Delicious.
***PearlTrees is a visual bookmarking service that allows you to group "pearls" (bookmarks) in mindmap-like "trees" via a nifty flash interface. You can check it out in action by viewing a mindmap of my articles on HubPages.
***Pinterest is a specialty bookmarking service that creates a virtual pinboard of images.
Pistash.io is a personal organizing tool that can save plain text or bookmarks.
Potluck allows you to share and discuss links with your friends.
Primly is a paid social bookmarking and archiving service.
***Reddit offers a platform to share and vote on news links that is similar to its top competitor, Digg.
Scrible allows you to save, organize, and annotate webpages.
Skloog has a 2,000 bookmark limit but is an interesting way to create an attractive collection of shortcuts to your favorite sites.
Snip.it is a recent startup that allows you to "snip" links and images and organize them into collections.
***SpringPad is a personal organizing app with lots of useful features that can double as a place to store bookmarks.
Stackful is a recent startup with features much like Delicious's new "stacks" feature.
Startaid offers basic bookmarking functionality, but a rather unattractive user interface.
***Stumbleupon is a popular and well-established social discovery engine that saves links that you rate via a browser extension.
Symbaloo is a start page that allows you to bookmark your most frequently visited sites for easy access.
Thinkery is a relatively new bookmarking tool with some cool productivity features built in.
TrailMeme allows you to create mind-map style "trails" of links on a related topic.
Trunk.ly is a fairly recent startup with some intriguing features, including automatically saving links shared or liked on a variety of other sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and more. NOTE: As of 11/2011, Trunk.ly has been purchased by AVOS and is no longer accepting new sign-ups.
Vi.sualize.us focuses on bookmarking images.
Vizited saves thumbnails of your bookmarks to make them easier to find.
Wozaik allows you to clip portions of webpages to save.
***XMarks is a personal bookmarking tool with some pretty cool features, including the ability to sync bookmarks across all your computers and browsers and a browser add-on that adds user reviews and ratings to your search results.
YourVersion is a social discovery engine that helps you find, bookmark, and share web content based on your interests.
ZooTool is an attractive, multimedia bookmarking app that is growing in popularity.
Zukmo is an information management app that stores bookmarks, documents, and streaming content to make them easily searchable and shareable.
Self-Hosted Delicious Alternatives
If you own a website of your own, you may be able to create your own personal Delicious clone with one of the following:
Although self-hosting your bookmarks does not offer the social features of websites like Delicious, it does ensure the long-term security of your data, since you and you alone control the servers. It is therefore a great option for people with some tech knowledge who are primarily interested in bookmarking for personal use.
Did I miss one?
Please comment below and let me know if I've missed a great social bookmarking website or tool!
