How to save and share your bookmarks with Pearltrees

Recently I read Yahoo have decided to drop one of my favorite services.
It seems, despite avid protests that this is not the case on Delicious’s part, the brass at Yahoo have decided that as far as they’re concerned online bookmarking pioneer Delicious.com can go the way of the Dodo.

While it isn’t clear what exactly the immediate implications of the announcement are, and it’s very likely that as a web research resource the site will remain relevant for some time to come, it’s clear that Delicious is now a risky choice for storing and sharing your bookmarks.

Where next?

The obvious question is “Where next?”
There are a wealth of alternatives – Google Bookmarks, Xmarks, and Diigo all come to mind. But after spending some time on each of these services, my choice is, and  has been for some time now, a slightly less known option. I use Pearltrees.

Why Pearltrees?

With Pearltrees every bookmarks you've ever shared is connected to all the rest

The reason I decided to settle on Pearltrees as my bookmarking service is because of their unique approach to displaying and organizing one’s collection. Pearltrees uses a graph display that makes the hierarchy of my bookmarks’ ordering immediately evident:

Hierarchical Filing

Pearltrees lets me store:

• Pearls – Single URLs
• Pearltrees – Folders containing URLs, Pearltrees, or as in the example above, both

URL Previews and Easy return to origin

In the Pearltree embedded above try hovering over the URL Pearl “Ten free usability testing tools“.

As you can see a pop-up display enables me to get an impression of the destination before I actually launch it.

Try clicking the preview screen in the popup – the URL is launched inside Pearltree’s overlay window, including comments and sharing buttons, while your original window is still open and can be returned to at any time.

Built for Collaboration and Sharing

Pearltrees is designed from the ground up for collaborative work.

You can leave comments on any single Pearl or Pearltree, share them and embed them elsewhere on the web (obviously…)

Social

Pearltrees users are encouraged to interact over shared interests and you can elect to receive notifications whenever another Pearltree user saves a relatively rare URL that you saved too.

Pearltrees users are encouraged to interact over shared interests

The Bad

The most annoying features of Pearltree are, unfortunately, also associated with its unique way of doing things: For one, the entire interface is Flash based (hopefully an HTML 5 version is coming?). Navigating the UI also takes a little getting used to, which is a shame. I guess these are birth pains and as the company matures they’ll collect feedback from users and involve more UI designers in the decisions.

Conclusion – Pearltrees is a diamond in the rough

Neither of  the faults I mentioned really changes the underlying fact that insofar as storing, sharing and collaborating bookmarks Pearltrees ROCKS

If you want to learn more about this interesting service check out this video of Pearltree founder Patrice Lamothe speaking at the 2.0 Launch Pad earlier this year

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Image credit: Kraetzsche Photo

Tags: 2.0 Launch Pad, Delicious, Diigo, front page feature, Google Bookmarks, Patrice Lamothe, Pearltrees, review, Xmarks

Category: How Tos, Reviews, Uncategorized