Would You Pay To Keep Your Bookmarks?

from the I-didn't-think-so... dept

A couple of years ago I was talking to a venture capitalist who had invested in one of the many startups that was going to allow people to save their bookmarks to a website. I pointed out that this was already a feature included in browsers, and how would they ever make any money off of it. He insisted that I was being shortsighted and this was one of the biggest "sure things" he had ever invested in. That particular bookmark company is long gone, but another one is attempting to make money by offering the service for a fee. That's right. Instead of just saving your bookmarks to your browser for free... you can now pay some company to store them for you. Seems like a great business model. They claim that there are "additional features" included in the pay-for-bookmarks model, but those seem to consist of the ability to "share" a bookmark. I'm sure that'll make the customers start throwing money in their direction.
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  1. identicon
    kai, 23 Aug 2001 @ 7:43pm

    blink

    I thought I heard of them in the context of 'search engine'--a bunch of hand catogorized bookmarks, when searched, might give you a sort of community-based yahoo.

    So I went there and tried to search for MIT. No luck! Stanford? Nope. Yahoo... links to a Yahoo address book (but not the 'main' yahoo).

    I guess their search engine model isn't a winner either.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    spongebrain, 23 Aug 2001 @ 8:04pm

    THINK MCFLY !!!!!!!11

    THINK MCFLY !!!!!!!11

    , saving links in youur browser sucks if you use many PCs. ie: work, home, laptop...

    need them stored remotly,


    but, yea, places to do this for free, like YHOO

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Mike (profile), 23 Aug 2001 @ 10:11pm

    Re: THINK MCFLY !!!!!!!11

    Sometimes I wish I could post with the same eloquence as Spongebrain...

    Anyway, it's not particularly difficult to save your bookmark file to the web. Many people do it. And, yes, there are tons of free places to do this as well.

    My point still stands that there's no business model here and there's no reason to ever pay someone for it.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Discman, 24 Aug 2001 @ 1:24am

    Re: THINK MCFLY !!!!!!!11

    And you can simply carry them around wioth you if you want - I have a pen drive that would hold all my bookmarks easily.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Scott, 24 Aug 2001 @ 9:29am

    Re: THINK MCFLY !!!!!!!11

    You CAN store in a pen drive but that costs money too.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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