Recently I was thinking about the bookmarking website del.icio.us. Between 2007 and 2012 I catalogued 534 bookmarks on the site. I remember when Yahoo! bought it, and only recently learned it changed hands yet again. I never thought it might completely go away.
Recent check in visits to del.icio.us give me doubts about its survival. For a platform that felt clean and modern when released, it certainly feels junky today. This coupled with a lack of positive news from developers increases my suspicion del.icio.us might not last. I decided it was time to save my links...again.
The plan? Export the bookmarks. Easier said than done however...
While I sympathize with ol' George, I'm also unwilling to risk my link diary to a business manager who must first go off and solve an existential crisis before reinstituting nominal product features.
My eventual solution was to extract my data the old fashioned way,clicking through each page to copy and paste each link one at a time into a spreadsheet hiring a freelance data entry specialist on fivr named Kabir.
I should have done that.
While copying my links (sorry Kabir, you'll get the job next time) I was happy to see so many niche writers still active on blogger. I can't say as much for the rest of my collection including pre app store mac software developers gone defunct, dead e-commce sites and random academic articles hosted on styless static pages.
Blogger appears to have lasting power that is rare on the web, and I'm intrigued. Some of my favorites include an arthouse cinema blog, news and commentary from Taiwan, niche photo collectors and more are all active on blogger.
Perhaps the true magic behind blogger is that it's no longer a fad. It's also not convenient. Clicking on a variety of blogs is more cumbersome than a Facebook or Twitter feed and the format isn't as trendy as you might find with Wordpress or Tmblr.
Post 2016, it is worth noting that online publishing is not a problem by default. The real shit happens whenever and wherever the attention seeking crowd happens to show up.
Blogger users resilient in their cause remain steadfast despite the limitations of the platform. No need to cater to the unrestrained masses because they are not here.
Someday people may become nostalgic for a generic platform popularized during mid 2000s. Until that time, it's reassuring to know if the last ten years didn't kill Blogger maybe the next ten won't either. I wish I could say the same for my delicious links.
My eventual solution was to extract my data the old fashioned way,
I should have done that.
While copying my links (sorry Kabir, you'll get the job next time) I was happy to see so many niche writers still active on blogger. I can't say as much for the rest of my collection including pre app store mac software developers gone defunct, dead e-commce sites and random academic articles hosted on styless static pages.
Blogger appears to have lasting power that is rare on the web, and I'm intrigued. Some of my favorites include an arthouse cinema blog, news and commentary from Taiwan, niche photo collectors and more are all active on blogger.
Perhaps the true magic behind blogger is that it's no longer a fad. It's also not convenient. Clicking on a variety of blogs is more cumbersome than a Facebook or Twitter feed and the format isn't as trendy as you might find with Wordpress or Tmblr.
Post 2016, it is worth noting that online publishing is not a problem by default. The real shit happens whenever and wherever the attention seeking crowd happens to show up.
Blogger users resilient in their cause remain steadfast despite the limitations of the platform. No need to cater to the unrestrained masses because they are not here.
Someday people may become nostalgic for a generic platform popularized during mid 2000s. Until that time, it's reassuring to know if the last ten years didn't kill Blogger maybe the next ten won't either. I wish I could say the same for my delicious links.
