Ma.gnolia - Found is the new search
Posted on February 2, 2006 | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks
About a week ago I was l was lucky enough to be selected as a beta-tester for a new website called Ma.gnolia. Ma.gnolia is a site which is basically designed to allow users to collect bookmarks. You create and keep an online profile full of your favorite websites. That alone is pretty convenient but what’s unique about Ma.gnolia is that it allows you to tag your bookmarks with keywords so that other users can find them. This is probably better explained by example so…
A user logs onto Ma.gnolia and creates a bookmark to Code Scene. They enter a description and tag it with words such as: xhtml, css, asp.net, sql, web standards.
Ma.gnolia keeps an eye on the tags you enter and shows you a tag cloud with those and similar words. Clicking on the “xhtml” tag would then bring up a list of relevant sites based on all the other users who’ve tagged a site. This lets you find other great sites and blogs that you may not otherwise have heard of.
You can also create and join groups based on any topic you can imagine. I joined the “Web Design” group and founds tons of links to great sites, some of which I knew about, others I’d never heard of. Lastly, you can create contacts so you can see what your friends are reading.
While I’m using it pretty much to keep tabs on web development sites and blogs, it’ll really help you find just about anything. Overall I was pretty impressed with how well it worked. It’s still in beta testing right now but should be launching in the next few weeks.
For now, go to the Ma.gnolia home page and sign up to be notified when it’s live.
Thanks for the review Jay, and for the great description of how social bookmarking works. It's amazing that many people still haven't heard of social bookmarking or what it can do for them, so your post is especially welcome. Keep watching, as we have much more to come in Ma.gnolia.