Not So Relevant

Social Bookmarking in Germany

Social bookmarking services have become very popular among internet users over the last few years. And it is no wonder as having easy access to your favourite web sites is probably vital to get the most out of the internet. Imagine you always had to query for that thought provoking article on being the only punk rocker in a redneck city. Not a good idea. You’d just waste time. And managing bookmarks in your browser? Try to manage 2,000+ bookmarks. Again, wasting time. Social bookmarking services are the way to go.

There are many popular services like Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, and Furl; however all of them are US services and therefore the focus is on English websites and articles. At least it seems so. I was wondering if there were any decent German bookmarking services which were hopefully focusing more on German sites. Actually there are more bookmarking services than I was aware of so far. Three ones have caught my attention:

Folkd

Folkd was publicly launched in July 2006, I think, and it is one of the few German services (with a contact address in London, UK though) which are multilingual: German, English, French, Spanish. However not all features and sites seem to be translated yet.

At first glance Folkd looks like a mixture of a social bookmarking site and a social news site. Though the feature list is quite impressive and goes beyond the basics:

• voting and bookmarking
• sidebar and browser extensions for Firefox and Internet Explorer
• audio files can be uploaded and played within Folkd; very cool
• a basic reputation system which is based on how many people bookmark and use a website you have submitted; at least that’s my understanding of it
• import of bookmarks from Del.icio.us, Firefox, Mister Wong,…
• channels: collections of bookmarks about a certain topic, though there are just three channels right now
• a basic blog for each user

Have a look at the video tour which explains most features.

Folkd is facing one major problem, though: lack of a significant user base. Currently there are just a little more than 1,800 people registered with it. That’s a shame because this service certainly deserves more users. Also some texts should be fixed, e.g. text on the import page of the German version switches from the informal Du to the formal Sie. Some consistency is required.

Mister Wong

Mister Wong was launched in spring of 2006 and has become Germany’s most well known social bookmarking site with almost 1.5 million bookmarks saved by users. There are also versions in English, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese available since a few weeks.

Of course, it features everything you expect:

• bookmarklets and a search plugin for Firefox
• WordPress plugin
• groups
• buddies
• top 20 lists for various subjects

Mister Wong is very professional and a serious competitor to Del.icio.us and other services in the German market.

Netselektor

Netselektor is a fairly new site which was launched in November 2006. An editorial team browses user submissions and recommends the best and noteworthy sites in various categories.

I think that’s an interesting approach and I really like it. Though this probably just works well if there are not many submissions daily. If there were several hundred submissions Netselektor needed more staff to select and review sites. Doomed to stay small?

Summary

All three services provide interesting features. Though I am not sure if I will use any of them regularly. Folkd and Netselektor are small and friendly services but lack a strong user base. Mister Wong is bigger and more professional and could be an alternative to Ma.gnolia and Del.icio.us. Maybe I’ll use it for German bookmarks only. I don’t know yet, though.

Related posts:

• Update: German Newspapers and Magazines
• German Newspapers do not Use Web 2.0 Services
• Yahoo! Bookmarks
• Sputtr: Central Spot for Search
• Overview on Social Bookmarking Services