Hey, You! Get Off of My Cloud! (Or The Rise of Anti-Social Media)

I’ve fallen in love with Pinboard (for bookmarking) and Simplenote (search for it on the iPhone app store) this week. I’ve been testing out both services for a little while but decided to take the plunge this week and use them more heavily.

And they rock.

Pinboard is Delicious from 2004 with more goodness baked in. It’s fast, easy and private.  That’s right… in an age of rival-bookmarker Diigo’s communities, Evernote offering sharing of notebooks as a Premium feature and RememberTheMilk touting their social features, I’m finding myself leaning back towards sites like Pinboard that take advantage of the web2.0 goodness with a nod towards those of us who want to bookmark without worrying about what the neighbors might think (not that I’m bookmarking anything scandalous, but I don’t have to worry about crossing the education/tech/marketing/science/music streams with Pinboard). 

Simplenote does exactly what I want a note taking app to do… it takes notes quickly, easily and syncs automagically. I love Evernote, but I’ve found myself overwhlemed there as of late since there are so many features (and since I do have so much data there).  Simplenote is… well, simple. And that’s refreshing.  The same with Pinboard vs Diigo. I love Diigo, but I honestly don’t make use of all their community and bookmarking features enough to pledge allegiance. 

So, will we see a rise of anti-social media apps that take us back to a “much more civilized time” of elegant and simple lightsabers rather than social blasters? I’m not sure. But the evolution of media is definitely fascinating to participate in and ponder.

Anti-Social Bookmarking


I joined Delicious back around the Holiday Season of 2004 and soon started bookmarking with regularity.  Aside from GMail, Delicious was one of the first web2.0 sites I really got excited about. And for good reason. Delicious changed the way we all thought about bookmarking. 

"A long long time ago, I remember how that music used to make me smile…"

However, Delicious eventually caught on, found a solid userbase and got itself acquired by Yahoo. Despite a site-wide user interface revamp, things have been stagnant on Delicious for the last couple of years. The original founders left Yahoo, the rabid community seemed to dissipate and folks like myself went off searching for other places to bookmark our web finds. One of those places was Ma.gnolia.com. We all know how that went (#FAIL)  I've been trying Diigo since I'm teaching and there's a heavy concentration of educators there (and great tools for us), but I still wanted a place where I could post my bookmarks in a quick, easy and thoughtless manner.

I might have found that in Pinboard.

Not only is it what Delicious was in '04, it includes a nifty "Read Later" function (hello Instapaper!). Best of all, Pinboard is "antisocial bookmarking" that gives me exactly what I want – bookmarking without having to worry about who is following, subscribed, in my network, etc. Clean, simple, fast and antisocial are sometimes good qualities.

This mentality even shows itself in the sign-up process. Rather than having an "open beta" program, you have to pay an increasing fee to join Pinboard. In other words, as the service becomes more popular, you have to pay more to join.  I had to pay $2.91 via Amazon Payments to join. I love that thinking. Revolutionary. Look for more copycats very soon.

So will Pinboard replace Delicious for me? Already has. Will it replace Diigo? Time will tell. Will Pinboard replace Instapaper? Not sure. I'd need an iPhone app or some way to save things on mobile Safari (iPhone browser) to make that happen.

But for the time being, I'm excited 2004-style. Fingers are crossed that roadmap goal at the top of this post doesn't happen