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Google and Facebook Poised to Become The New Standard in Social Bookmarking

15 Jul, 2011

I’ve been clear about my affection for the social bookmarking service Delicious, but I’m afraid that the site’s days are numbered. It has nothing to do with Yahoo! selling it off—honestly, I’m happy that they did. It has everything to do with the ubiquity of two little buttons (seen on this blog) that are powered by two of the largest Internet companies in the world.

Google has a direct path to becoming the default social bookmarking service due to the reach of their platform

The Facebook Like button is everywhere, and Google’s counterpart, the +1 is becoming nearly as widespread. They’re dead simple to use—just click to Like or +1 content that you enjoy. There are some key differences between Liking and Plus One-ing, but both could easily replace saving bookmarks to a service like Delicious with some simple modifications.

How Facebook’s Like Button Could Replace Delicious

Presently, Liking something via Facebook is more about sharing content at a specific moment in time. It’s become so close to Facebook’s Share functionality that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the two. Essentially, Liking content outside of Facebook sends a notification to your feed that your friends can see. It’s like saying, “Hey guys, I just read this hilarious post about Kim Kardashian and thought you might like to check it out.”

There is currently no way to organize, search or even see everything you’ve Liked. Quite simply, Facebook could allow users to add topics or keywords (these could even be dynamically generated based on meta tags and contextual site content) to Like’s and then provide a singular area—accessible via the user’s profile page—where members can view and organize their Likes. This simple change could increase the usage of the Facebook Like as a means of bookmarking and cripple usage of tools like Delicious.

The +1 Button as a Delicious Killer—Advantage: Google

Google has a more direct path to becoming the new default in social bookmarking due to the reach of their platform. +1’s are currently associated with online content and within the Google+ social network (just like the Like button), and +1’s can also be found in Google search results. But wait, there’s more…

Google’s Chrome browser could make the +1 even more ubiquitous—allowing users to +1 content on sites that haven’t implemented the +1 button within the site experience. Extending beyond the browser, users could effectively utilize the Android platform to +1 not just content but applications, places and people that they encounter online or off.

Google+ Profile - +1's Tab

Unlike Facebook, Google already aggregates +1’s on a member’s user profile (as seen above). Implementing a means of searching this content and allowing users to organize +1’s through tagging would be trivial for the Google design and engineering team. It would also spell doom for other online bookmarking services.

Time will tell if the future I’ve hypothesized will come to pass, but I’d put my money on Google implementing a solution fairly similar to what I outlined above within the next 24 months or less. It’s been great knowing you Delicious. Hopefully, the Google will create a tool for me to convert all of my online bookmarks to +1’s.

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