I’ve had del.icio.us malaise for the past couple of months – one measly link since mid-December. I’d blame it on the Yahoo acquisition – and in fact I was all set to – but my usage of del.icio.us really started to drop off in mid-October, long before del.icio.us was bought. Odd that this happened, since I went through a few months where whenever I wanted to tell somebody about something, I’d say “just look it up, it’s in my del.icio.us links.” Perhaps it’s just the Web 2.0 version of lesbian bed death. (Okay, I’ll admit it, I threw that last metaphor in there just because I wanted to see what it’d do to my search engine referral traffic.)
Getting to the point – there’s a million social bookmarking services out there, and I’ve got unused accounts on most of them, but when Pete Cashmore told me that Simpy would let you add your own AdSense links to your bookmarks page, allowing you to make 100% of the revenue, that got my attention enough to dust off the Simpy account. I love revshare with end users – it strikes back at the whole ‘Web 2.0-colonialism ride the long tail of user-generated content to riches’ theme by treating people as publishers, which is exactly right. So I’ve switched over to Simpy. I’m not expecting to get rich off it – this move is to support the principle of revenue-sharing. We’ll see if my Simpy account goes the way of my del.icio.us account, but right now I’m more excited about social bookmarking than I’ve been in some time.
Note to Otis: Now that you’re giving this money directly to your users, you should roll with it and highlight Simpy’s new ability to be used as a platform for business. Think about it – a more appealing revenue-share percentage than Squidoo combined with superior ease-of-use equals a natural opportunity for those of us who want to construct and maintain lists of annotated, tagged links. You wouldn’t have to do too much to pull it off – give users a bit more control over the placement and number of their AdSense ads, perhaps allow them to adjust the colors of the page and play with the font size a bit, and you’re good to go. When people start using your site as a money-making platform and actively driving traffic to it, it’ll do wonders for your site’s growth…
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Welcome to Simpy!
Those are all valid points, and I will think about them. I can see what you are saying very, very clearly, but I don’t want this to turn into a target for “work from home, make millions” or other scams, so I need to be very careful. Giving more power to customize the look and feel sounds good, but again I have to think about this, as I do want to preserve a certain Simpy image, the brand, etc.
But thank you for your thoughts and ideas, I will consider them all.
Oh, and one more important thing that I should probably mention/emphasize on Simpy Chichimichi is that currently the only place where the ads are shown is the main user page (e.g. /user/gyardley). This will be changing (expanding) in the near future, making those ads more targeted (think /user/gyardley/tag/nyc or /user/gyardley/search/very-specific-search-here)
Is Simpy integrated with del.icio.us, so that a post to simpy gets posted to del.icio.us? I use spurl which does that. I’d consider trying simpy if it also posted to del.icio.us. I like the idea of two copies.
I’d also want to upload all my current tags. Can i do that?
You might also like to check out http://www.blinklist.com. Althought we don’t have any ads. I guess in this new world that might be a bad thing…. hmm… I think I prefer ad free user pages.
Peter: not currently, but several people have asked about that recently, so perhaps it’s time I add the ability to do that.
Greg: I’ve been aware of Root Markets for a while now (I know some people who know Seth), but just now took a closer look at root.net. Very interesting, and pretty close to some of my own thinking.
Don’t mean to be rude but Simpy’s website is downright messy.
Delicious or reddit is cleaner and easier on the eyes.
Otis: You should swing by one day and have a lunch. Are you in NYC?
Mike: Blinklist looks very nice and there’s no doubt you’re innovating quickly but revenue-share was the bit that turned my head.
theCreator: agreed, graphically it could use a bit of a spruce-up.
Greg: Yes, I’m in NYC. Stopping by would be nice.
theCreator:
I forgot to ask. Regarding the “messy website” comment, could you please point to what exactly you find messy, so I can improve it? If you have ideas about less messy alternatives, I’m all eyes! Maybe Greg’s blog post comments are not the best place to do this, so feel free to email your constructive criticism to me directly. You can use http://www.simpy.com/contact .
Thanks!
Have you looked at ma.gnolia, Chris Messina won’t shut up about it.
Lloyd – I’ve looked at ma.gnolia before but haven’t been back to it in months.
To be honest, I haven’t used any social bookmarking site in months, including del.icio.us and simpy.
I find that I bookmark a ton of stuff for a while, find that I’m bookmarking for the sake of bookmarking, say ‘eh, why am I doing this, I never go back to it,’ and quit.
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