Earthling

Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.

The revamped Yahoo Bookmarks(in Beta) rolled into town this week with some serious fanfare. I've only just started to get acquainted with it and am trying to reserve judgement until I can poke it with a stick a little more, but one of the first impressions I had of it seems to follow what many Del.icio.us users felt. That is, I like the dirt-simpleness of Del.icio.us, and it helped define for me how I now expect a minimalist interface to work...why the decidedly different approach on the new application? And if Yahoo already has Del.icio.us, why not collapse the other bookmarking tools they have into one somehow?

You don't have to look far to find extensive discussions from those who love, resent, or puzzle at the new application and its strategy. I don't know how I feel about the "minimalism is for nerds" contention that many long-time critics of Del.icio.us seem to put forth. For someone who is new to web applications, having a limited number of knobs and buttons to press and a clear visual path through the interface seems to me to be a useful principle to follow. It works that way in industrial design, too. But then again, I'm reserving judgement until I've kicked the tires on Yahoo Bookmarks. One thing I've noticed right away is the de-emphasized social aspects. Content added by others dominates the Del.icio.us main page, while the vague "recommended" is the only hint on Yahoo Bookmarks that you can see what other people are looking at. Are sharing and discovery less interesting to the much more numerous crowd that uses Yahoo Bookmarks?

I found one of the most interesting pieces of commentary in the equivalent of a dark alley -- in the comments attached to the Digg.com submnission. Some or all of it is also at TechCrunch. There, product lead Tom Chi lays out the rationale for the new overhaul, and for keeping both services around. I do like his analogy, that it's akin to keeping steak fries and curly fries on the same menu to appeal to different palates. It's worth a read, perhaps just after you have a look for yourself, and just before you go off and draw your conclusions.

If you've used the new Yahoo Bookmarks yet or it and Del.icio.us both, what do you make of all this?