The following is an edited version of a wishlist I had been keeping on the side. The main idea is to define what would be, in my mind, the “ultimate social bookmarking system.” Which, obviously, goes way beyond social bookmarking. In a way, I even conceive of it as the ultimate tool for sharing online content. Yes, it’s that ambitious. Will it ever exist? Probably not. Should it exist? I personally think so. But I may be alone in this. Surely, you’ll tell me that I am indeed alone, which is fine. As long as you share your own wishlist items.
The trigger for my posting this is that someone contacted me, asking for what I’d like in a social bookmarking system. I find this person’s move quite remarkable, as a thoughtful strategy. Not only because this person contacted me directly (almost flattering), but because such a request reveals an approach to listening and responding to people’s needs that I find lacking in some software development circles.
This person’s message served as a prompt for my blogging this, but I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while. In fact, my guess is that I created a first version of this wishlist in 2007 after having it on my mind for a while before that. As such, it represents a type of “diachronic” or “longitudinal” view of social bookmarking and the way it works in the broader scheme of social media.
Which also means that I wrote this before I heard about Google Wave. In fact, I’m still unclear about Google Wave and I’ll need to blog about that. Not that I expect Wave to fulfill all the needs I set up for a sharing tool, but I get the impression that Google is finally putting some cards on the table.
The main part of this post is in outline form. I often think through outlines, especially with such a type of notes. I fully realize that it may not be that clear, as a structure, for other people to understand. Some of these bullet points cover a much broader issue than what they look like. But the overall idea might be fairly obvious to grasp, even if it may sound crazy to other people.
I’m posting this to the benefit of anyone who may wish to build the killer app for social media. Of course, it’s just one man’s opinion. But it’s my entitled opinion.
Concepts
What do we share online?
- “Link”
- “Page”
- Identified content
- Text
- Narrative
- Contact information
- Event description
- Contact information
- Event invitation
- Image
- Recording
- Structured content
- Snippet
- Access to semi-private content
- Site’s entry point
Selective sharing
Private
- Archiving
- Cloud access
Individually shared
- “Check this out”
- Access to address book
- Password protection
- Specialization/expertise
- Friendship
Group shared
- Shared interests (SIG)
- Collaboration (task-based)
Shared through network
- Define identity in network
- Semi-public
Public
- Publishing
- Processed
- Reading lists
Notetaking
- Active reading
- Anchoring text
- Ad hoc list of bookmarks
- “Empty URL”
- Create container/page
- Personal notes
Todos
- To read
- To blog
- To share
- To update
- Projects
- GTD
- Contexts
- Add to calendar (recognized as event)
Outlining/Mindmapping
- Manage lists of links
- Prioritize
- Easily group
Social aspects of sharing
- Gift economy
- Personal interaction
- Trust
- Hype
- Value
- Customized
Cloud computing
- Webware
- “Online disk”
- Without download
- Touch devices
- Edit online
Personal streaming
- Activities through pages
- Logging
- Flesh out personal profile
Tagging
- “Folksonomy”
- Enables non-hierarchical structure
- Semantic fields
- Related tags
- Can include hierarchy
- Tagclouds define concept map
Required Features
Crossplatform, crossbrowser
- Browser-specific tools
- Bookmarklets
- Complete access through cloud
Keyboard shortcuts
- Quick add (to account)
- Vote
- Bookmark all tabs (à la Flock)
- Quick tags
Related pages
Recommended
- Based on social graph
- Based on tags
- Based on content
- Based on popularity
- Pointing to this page
Quickly enter links
- Add in place (while editing)
- Similar to “spell as you type”
- Incremental search
- Add full link (title, URL, text, metadata)
Archiving
- Prevent linkrot
- Prepare for post-processing (offline reading, blogging…)
- Enable bulk processing
- Maintain version history
- Internet Archive
Automatic processing
- Tags
- Summary
- Wordcount
- Reading time
- Language(s)
- Page structure analysis
- Geotagging
- Vote
Thread following
- Blog comments
- Forum comments
- Trackbacks
- Pings
Exporting
All
- Archiving
- Prepare for import
- Maintain hierarchy
Selected
- Tag
- Category
- Recently used
- Shared
- Site homepage
- Blogroll
- Blogs
Formats
- Other services
- HTML
- RSS
- OPML
- Widget
Features
- Comments
- Tags
- Statistics
- Content
Offline processing
- Browser-based
- Device based
- Offline archiving
- Include content
- Synchronization
Microblogging support
- Laconi.ca/Identi.ca
- Ping.fm
- Jaiku
Fixed/Static URL
- Prevent linkrot
- Maintain list for same page
- Short URLs
- Automatically generated
- Expansion on mouseover
- Statistics
Authentication
- Use of resources
- Identify
- Privacy
- Unnecessary for basic processing
- Sticks (no need to login frequently)
- Access to contacts and social graph
- Multiple accounts
- Personal/professional
- Contexts
- Group accounts
-
Premium accounts
- Server space
- Usage statistics
- Promotion
-
Support
- OpenID
- As group login
- Google Accounts
- Facebook Connect
- OAuth
- OpenID
Integration
- Web history
- Notebook
- Blogging platform
- Blog editor
- Microblogging platform
- Logbook
- General purpose content editor
- Toolbar
- URL shortening
- Address book
- Social graph
- Personal profile
- Browser
- Bookmarks
- History
- Autocomplete
- Analytics
- Search
- Online
- Offline
Related Tools
- Diigo
- WebCitation
- Ping.fm
- BackType
- Facebook share
- Blog This
- Link This
- Share this
- Digg
- Plum
- Spurl
- CoComments
- MyBlogLog
- TwtVite
- Twistory
- Windows Live Writer
- Magnolia
- Stumble Upon
- Delicious
- Google Reader
- Yahoo Pipes
- Google Notebook
- Zoho Notebook
- Google Browser Sync
- YouTube
- Flock
- Zotero
Disparate 