11 ms·

End of the Road for Xmarks

201 points by willwagner 16y ago

martinp 16y ago
Sorry to see them go. I've been using their extension in Firefox since the beginning and it has always performed exceptionally well while synchronizing thousands of bookmarks.
holychiz 16y ago
sucks to have this ending after all your efforts. Xmarks was a great product. Hats off to you and your team and good luck in your next adventure.
baddox 16y ago
That sucks. How do I synchronize my passwords with Chrome now?
- jonursenbach 16y ago
  Check out https://lastpass.com/ https://lastpass.com/
  - ecaradec 16y ago
    I didn't know about it, it's really great. It's sort of a synchronized keepass with better browser integration. Thanks.
- brianwillis 16y ago
  Chrome has built in syncing. Options for setup are in the options panel, at the top of the "personal stuff" tab.
- ericabiz 16y ago
  I use Roboform--it's cross platform/cross browser. Works well. Not free, however, if you have a lot of passwords (most geeks will cross into their paid territory pretty fast.)
wyclif 16y ago
Wow, xmarks is dead because they couldn't "find a scalable business model" with two million users. http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850 http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850
- markbao 16y ago
  xmarks: @PinboardIN hey if you've got some good ideas, we're all ears! and, of course, pinboardIN: @xmarks the model that has worked well for us is 'charge people money for a useful product or service'
  - user24 16y ago
    exactly. The hardest part is having the balls to charge for lemonade in the first place. edit: source, patio11: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668553 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668553
- aberkowitz 16y ago
  Why don't the Pinboard folks buy out Xmarks?
  - adambyrtek 16y ago
    What would they do that? The fact that Xmarks is closing doesn't mean they would have sold it for a few bucks. Not to mention that Pinboard is run just by two guys, as far as I know without any external investment.
    - aberkowitz 16y ago
      I admit that I did not investigate it thoroughly enough. As you concluded, they may not have the money or the man power to acquire Xmarks. Ignoring these vital issues, it appears that they have the necessary passion and expertise in bookmark management.
twodayslate 16y ago
Excellent service. I have been using xmarks for a while.
redstripe 16y ago
I never used them because there are plenty of intranet related bookmarks that I wouldn't want appearing on a search engine. This service could have lead to some nasty data breaches. It's probably better for the internet in general if they fade away. Having said that, it sucks that they ran a popular service that they couldn't monetize.
nod 16y ago
Are there any other sync services that work across both Firefox and Chrome?
- benmccann 16y ago
  This is my main use case. I would gladly pay for one.
sjs 16y ago
Chrome killed my use of Xmarks. With a consistent, cross-platform browser that has syncing out-of-the-box I no longer need Xmarks. I mainly use other browsers for testing now.
- mitjak 16y ago
  Ditto here but I can't think of a way to bring those bookmarks over to Safari to sync with the iPhone, aside from using Xmarks. Any ideas?
  - sjs 16y ago
    Instapaper. I know that's kind of a cop-out but incidentally it (and Google) have killed my use of bookmarks apart from a relatively svelte bookmarks bar. Instapaper is my reading queue, Google is my long-term memory. Bookmarks are more like shortcuts for me now. The nice thing is that I can "bookmark" any link from any browser that I use, as well as twitter and RSS. And I have them instantly on my iPad, phone, notebook, or any machine with a browser without installing any software or extensions.
    - mitjak 16y ago
      What do you mean by Google? Google Bookmarks, the Chrome sync? Google Notebook? :)
      - sjs 16y ago
        Oh, just Google's search. If I want to find something I previously read I Google it now instead of sifting through crufty, old, poorly organized and needlessly hierarchical bookmarks. Tagged bookmarks would help there I guess (like Delicious) but then you have to tag everything...
  - tomica 16y ago
    firefox sync and firefox home?
kylec 16y ago
Huh. I was actually looking for a Chrome bookmark sync for my iPhone two or three weeks ago and I came across Xmarks. I didn't choose it because I was really hoping for a standalone app that would interface with Chrome's built-in bookmark sync. While it's sad to see any popular software company shutter its doors, since it is going away (in a comparatively short 90 days, no less) I'm personally glad I didn't start using it.
jsankey 16y ago
with the emergence of competent sync features built in to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, it’s hard to see users paying for a service that they can now get for free After taking so many knocks, it's easy to be disheartened. But why not at least give this a go? It doesn't involve a large engineering investment - just charge for what you already offer! When the alternative is shutting down, where existing users need to move on anyway, you might as well. Those users might appreciate the value of what they have now that it is about to disappear...
- scg 16y ago
  Maybe it's because it creates an obligation for them to continue the service for a reasonable amount of time.
  - jsankey 16y ago
    Fair point, but how about this: they've committed to 3 months anyway, so why not try charging for 3 months? Just don't touch the money coming in during that period. If they reach the end of that time, and it's not working, issue refunds and shut down. There is some cost to this (transaction fees etc), but seemingly minimal compared to other running costs they've already committed to (because if it fails, the number of transactions will necessarily be low). They might struggle to get people to sign up when there is doubt about the service surviving. But that cat is already out of the bag, and as I alluded to earlier they could also play this to their advantage (charging now is not a money-grab, it's simply a matter of keeping a valuable service viable).
    - Goosey 16y ago
      I agree 100%. This whole thing reminds me of reddit's recent budget issues and how their appeal resulted in a huge boost for them. Just looking at the comments on this blog post make me think that simply including a 'paypal donation' link at the bottom of this blog post ALONE would have generated enough funds to keep them running for for some time. This is a bit of a harsh thing to say... but is it possible they were not able to find a business model due to lack of trying?
bherms 16y ago
Sad to see them go, but this might be a good lesson for several people out there who go into startups with the "make product now, worry about revenue model later" mentality. While that can be successful in many cases, there is a downside as well where many businesses don't survive. Either way, I'll miss xmarks since I use it on all my computers and my phone :( Thanks for the great product for the last several years.
mbyrne 16y ago
They are failing because they can't even ask people to pay for their service. They skipped that and went directly to we are shutting down our servers in 90 days. DHH needs to give them some scream therapy about business models. The one he does about asking your customers to pay for your service.
- frossie 16y ago
  I am now going to repeat what you said, but with more feeling: We also considered refocusing Xmarks as a freemium sync business, but the prospects there are grim too: with the emergence of competent sync features built in to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, it’s hard to see users paying for a service that they can now get for free. Ask me! Ask me! Why don't you ask me ?!!! Native firefox syncing isn't going to help me sync my Firefox bookmarks to my iPhone, is it? Maybe that is worth something to me, ya know? Isn't it completely ironic, that on top of HN right now is PG's Y-combinator screed, with how important it is to launch as soon as possible with as little functionality as you can in order to let users guide you to what they really want? So users are okay for telling you what features they want but they are not okay for telling you whether they want to pay ?? I mean okay, maybe I am a complete aberration in being willing to pay a few bucks for xmarks. But they didn't even ask. Maybe there would have been enough other aberrations out there to keep it going as a low-key low-turnover service. This is the thing that bothers me with the start-up world - it seems so bi-modal: make it big or go bust. What about a quiet, modest little service that can pay for itself and maybe a bit extra? Bah. I'm sad.
  - prawn 16y ago
    This situation always reminds me of @shitmydadsays: "That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you, don't do it for them."
  - binomial 16y ago
    Apparently they researched it, probably by asking some sample of the users: http://blog.xmarks.com/?page_id=1883#premium http://blog.xmarks.com/?page_id=1883#premium
  - 16y ago
desigooner 16y ago
I, for one, am extremely disappointed to hear this news. I use Xmarks extensively on chrome and firefox across 3 computers. It is so easy to setup and use. I've never managed to get the Chrome sync working as it always hangs up and never finishes setting up. I think I'd have paid for Xmarks as a service.
- chime 16y ago
  > I've never managed to get the Chrome sync working as it always hangs up and never finishes setting up. Same here. I tried really hard to make Chrome sync work reliably across the multiple devices I use. Kept duplicating my bookmarks, deleting new bookmarks, and just randomly making extra folders. XMarks is just so much nicer and works across all the browsers I use.
- sahaj 16y ago
  have you tried it in latest beta-branch? it's gotten a lot of features in the last month or so.
naner 16y ago
Oops. I just switched to Xmarks after Chrome's sync ate a chunk of my bookmarks because of a version mismatch.
- wccrawford 16y ago
  It's okay. I've had so many problems with xmarks and chrome that you'll be glad you didn't get to switch.
LiveTheDream 16y ago
Todd, will you open-source any code?
- Caligula 16y ago
  Opensourcing the corpus would be more interesting but I suppose with their privacy policy this is a no go.
  - LiveTheDream 16y ago
    100% agree. I had that question included in my first draft of my original comment, but figured anonymizing the bookmark data is a very tricky/impossible task so I removed it. See AOL search data[1]. Maybe Xmarks could sent an opt-in request to users and release the data of people who are comfortable with it. I would be fine with it, personally; all my bookmarks are on delicious anyway. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal
larrywright 16y ago
Does anyone else find it odd that two million active users is "not enough users". Most startups would kill for that.
- ericabiz 16y ago
  Reminds me of the old dot-com screed: We lose money on every customer, but we make it up in volume!
amackera 16y ago
I would pay for Xmarks.
aresant 16y ago
"For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service." Not a bad hypothesis, one I see regularly but 90 days to close sure illustrates the downside and value of searching for that monetization model earlier rather than later.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  I think it's a fairly shocking hypothesis. My feeling was that the lesson from this is don't go into a business if you don't have at least a vague idea how you're going to make money out of it. I love XMarks and I'll absolutely miss it (and would have considered paying for it) but this would seem to be niaivity in the extreme.
  - dillydally 16y ago
    It was founded by Mitch Kapor. I think he knows a thing or two about starting companies...
    - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
      I don't care who founded them, they've just announced that they're closing citing a lack of a viable business model. That would seem to suggest that they might have thought about revenue a little earlier in the process and I have a feeling that with hindsight Mitch Kapor might agree.
      - dillydally 16y ago
        Funny. Do you have any actual information about how early they tried to find a business model? I suspect you don't. So, the situation is this: we have a product lots of people want. The naive business model (freemium) won't work -- a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that. What do you do? Go forward building a very popular product and look for a business model, or quit because you can't think of how to make money from day 1?
kalvin 16y ago
Nobody's mentioned this yet, so: this is particularly notable because it's "Mitch Kapor's startup" (famous for Lotus 1-2-3). Used to be called Foxmarks.
ajg1977 16y ago
Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone. It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to create a profitable business.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- buro9 16y ago
  I honestly didn't know xmarks existed, I probably missed it because I used to be more of an Opera user before Chrome with only a fleeting interest in Firefox inbetween. Firefox I moved to because of Weave, and I only fully shifted to Chrome when the sync became full-featured. Xmarks may not be able to compete within a single browser, but the killer play is syncing across them. Having just read the feature list I would happily pay $5 per month for the secure password syncing across browsers. The bookmarks have a little value to me, but the password syncing has pretty significant value.
  - twistedanimator 16y ago
    If all you need is secure password syncing, you should check out LastPass (http://lastpass.com/ http://lastpass.com/).
- mtr 16y ago
  I have a feeling that Xmarks is getting more press by saying that they will shut things down in 3 months versus them making an annoucement that they're shifting to a fremium model. While it could backfire, the additional press coverage could be leveraged to a freemium model if they do it before everyone abandons ship.
- fady 16y ago
  you're not alone.. I would pay as well
terpua 16y ago
From "build something people want" to "built something people want" to "can't monetize 2 million users." Any other examples of this?
- sirn 16y ago
  Reddit? But at least they tried charging their users, and it worked.
Ogre 16y ago
I use the Xmarks firefox plugin, but with my own server. It's always supported that. I expect that'll keep working for a while until a newer Firefox breaks the plugin, so I'm still in the same boat of needing to find another sync method. But I might have longer than people who use the service. Or shorter, no way to tell, really.
- FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
  I'm in the same boat. The article didn't explicitly mention the situation where users are syncing to their own servers. I'm wondering if that would really be impacted seeing as you're not really using any of their server resources?
  - Ogre 16y ago
    Hopefully they'll open source the plugin so we can keep it updated for changes to Firefox. Though I'll probably just switch to another solution, especially if there's another that uses my own server. Or maybe just Dropbox. I only switched to Xmarks after Google Browser Sync went away, I guess I should just get used to this.
    - Yopie 16y ago
      While maintaining cross browser capability, I couldn't agree if xmark could work with dropbox or my own server.
wolfrom 16y ago
I find it strange that there are no buyers interested in your user base. I'd love to hear more about the monetization efforts that you attempted, as I would have imagined there should be numerous ways to leverage those users. But, of course, if I was an expert, I'd probably have the capital to make an offer.
est 16y ago
I hope they could open source their code or their sync protocol, or at least release a guide how to setup thirdparty sync servers.
ianferrel 16y ago
My experience with Xmarks was not a great one. I used it when it was first called Foxmarks and enjoyed it. Some time after the name change, I noticed that one of the updates had turned on by default some extra overlays on the google search results page touting their rankings. The blog post suggests that this was a bonus feature, or a value-add, but that's not how I saw it. A previously well-behaved bookmarks sync plugin all of a sudden decided to impose on my preferred search engine. That's a spammy low-class intrusion into my browsing experience. I turned off the feature, but every time I updated the plugin thereafter it was turned back on by default. I jumped ship as soon as Chrome presented a viable alternative.
jawee 16y ago
I used Foxmarks for a long while when I was using Firefox, until Google Browser Sync came along, which has also passed. It was a great idea at the time. In its modern iteration, however, I felt like the best part about it was the inter-browser interoperability. I used it more recently for a time when I was still mostly using Chrome and then Firefox on some machines (such as BSD boxes). All of the newer browser sync options that I am aware of are in a convenient location--built into the browser. Opera, Chrome, Firefox, et all are all getting bookmark sync options. However, I would much like to see a way to sync easily between the different browsers again. This is what made XMarks useful once it evolved past being only for Firefox. For now, I'm using all Opera, partially so I can keep everything together including my mobile devices.
cowmixtoo 16y ago
I'm afraid to go back to Google for bookmark syncing because the last time Google offered the service they shut it down. That's how I got to X/FoxMarks in the first place.
ww520 16y ago
I really hate to see Xmarks shutdown. Been a happy user. For not going the charging user route, could it be that they took some rounds of funding and expanded their company structure and infrastructure greatly to the point that it couldn't be sustained without a huge success? They expanded into the search and other stuff besides bookmark sync'ing. Those are the ones that don't pan out and dragging down the whole company. Instead of shutting down everything, it would be better to keep the bookmark sync part and dump the rest, and start charging users. Not sure whether the investors would go for the low return route.
binomial 16y ago
On an opportunistic note, I do wish they'd everyone access to their "1 billion bookmark corpus", in anonymized form of course.
photon_off 16y ago
xMarks has an amazing set of data. A set of tagged bookmarks on a large enough scale is essentially like running mechanical turk (with 2,000,000 users) on the entire internet (better yet, only bookmark-worthy parts of the internet), and asking it to "describe this page in 10 words or less". The results, I think, are the most accurate description of URLs you could get on such a large scale. Essentially every site that has over a certain amount of bookmarks is guaranteed to be of high quality and very relevant to what it's been tagged as. (The only problem is when sites change, domains expire, etc). When I was making MoreOf.It, I scouted the competition in depth. The only one that stood out was xMarks, and similarity search wasn't even their main gig. They understand the richness of bookmarking data. They've separated URLs into categories, and have the highest ranking sites in those categories. They also nailed similarity pretty well. I might even say their results are better than mine, because they have a much larger index of sites. Two and a half years ago, when I first built a prototype of similarity search, there were hardly any meta-websites. Besides Quantcast and their ilk, and bookmarking websites, and maybe a couple of bullshit "site worth calculators" (which just multiply site traffic by an estimated CPM), there was hardly anything happening in the meta-site space. Now, there are tons more services that cater to people Gooling an actual url or site name. To name a few, CrunchBase, AboutUs.org, BackType, UberVU, SimilarSites, SitesLike, and sites that aggregate results from these (QuarkBase). "Meta" is blossoming, and it seems like xMarks could take advantage of this with their rich dataset. For example, as someone told me I should do, they could sell analytics information to websites about their competitors. If you're ZipCar.com, for example, you would pay to know the following: How have people described zipcar.com in the last (x amount of time), and what are the trends of those tags? How is my popularity vs. an automatically generated list of my competitors [ala: similar sites]. Which competitors are trending, and with which tags? Any new competitors that are breaking through the ranks? Some information could give cues to alter your business: What types of tags are related to my business are trending right now (i.e.: perhaps "bike share" is becoming more and more popular. I think that's valuable information. And, like an arms dealer, you can deal to both sides of competition. With 2,000,000 users organizing this set of data (for their own benefit of course), it's pretty confident sample size and it's win-win for everyone. Frankly, I don't understand what benefits "synchronizing" offers. Why not just store your bookmarks on any number of bookmarking websites (Delicious, Google, etc), and then log-in to that website from whatever browser/computer/device you want? I do, however, see value in the analytics of what people bookmark, and how they bookmark it.
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
In my fantasy world, Marco Arment would buy Xmarks and combine it with Instapaper. I'm sad to see Xmarks disappear without any viable alternative. I'd gladly pay $15-20 per year if that's what it took, but I imagine it could be even cheaper since cloud storage is so cheap: http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/whats-the-cost-of-a-gb-in-the-cloud/ http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/whats-the-cost-of-a-g...
bcrawl 16y ago
"Looking for the list of all auto manufacturers? Or presidential libraries? Or art supply sites? A casual comparison of our results with those of the major search engines would convince you that we were on to something. We recruited a group of non-technical subjects to do a usability test, and it flopped. Sit people in front of a search box and ask them to test it, and their first query is their own name. #FAIL." Why did they assume their primary market was going to be non-technical people? Why not build some thing like stumbleupon of 100 Million bookmarks.
joshu 16y ago
2m users * 1% conversion rate * $10/yr = $100k = probably not enough for a VC-backed startup. My suspicion is that because users just used the browser's internal bookmarks they couldn't easily add affordances that would draw attention, leaving no surface on which to advertise. I guess this is one advantage that delicious had, although breaking the bookmarking paradigm to do so was very painful in other ways. I no longer believe startups who claim their value proposition is "the data will be really valuable someday."
- jonknee 16y ago
  That would be $200k, but still not enough to make your conclusion any different.
  - joshu 16y ago
    oops. indeed.
- robk 16y ago
  Yep "probably not enough for a VC-backed startup" is the key here. This would have been a nice bootstrapped business. For them taking VC put them on a road that unfortunately wasn't the right one for them and forced them to swing for a bigger outcome than was possible. Sad.
  - dillydally 16y ago
    $100k is an ok number for a one-person outfit, but it would be hard to support even one employee on that number. In face, their current model of altering the Google SERPs almost certainly generates more revenue.
- DevX101 16y ago
  How does delicious make money? I love your product and use it almost every day, but it's not immediately obvious to me that there's any advertising.
- gvb 16y ago
fauigerzigerk 16y ago
It's always sad when someone's dreams are shattered. But what I don't get is why a bookmark syncing service needs venture capital, employees, a CEO and whatnot. There may not be a business model that supports all that, but there may be a business model that pays for the labor actually required to provide a syncing service. In a way this is like shutting down all the cafes that failed to become Starbucks.
- pclark 16y ago
  You don't get why a bookmark syncing service needs venture capital, employees, a CEO and what not? Web applications don't just grow on trees ...
- bstrong 16y ago
  My guess is that this has a lot to do with when they started. In 2006, the cloud platforms we take for granted today didn't exist. Running a service meant buying servers, hiring an ops team, etc. Starting today, you could probably bring a sync service up on App Engine in a few weeks and operate it for a couple hundred bucks a month. I started my last company in 2005, and I've often thought that if we had started a couple of years later when the cloud platforms were available, we could have been a lot more successful. Instead we built a product and an organization around an obsolete technology stack with a high cost structure, and there was no going back.
Tichy 16y ago
Aren't there several YC companies who do searches of browsing history? At the moment I rely on Firefox awesome bar, but I have a nagging feeling that it is not reliable (keep not finding sites I was sure I had bookmarked). So a better way to search and organize bookmarks is still being called for. I can't imagine that there isn't a market for better bookmarking...
kumark23 16y ago
Our newly launched service Zukmo is a good alternative for Xmarks. I just posted a request for it to be reviewed (under Ask HN): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735218 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735218
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
EvanMiller 16y ago
Lessons learned: 1. Adding a feature to someone else's product is a risky business model. If it's popular, the product-maker will implement your feature, at which point your goose is cooked. 2. Adding a free feature to someone else's free product isn't even risky. It is among the surest methods of losing money. 3. Know when to sell. The missed opportunity here was search. With their data and methods, Xmarks was able to improve query results for a predictable fraction of searches. At this point (2008), they should have sold to one of the up-and-coming search engines -- Windows Live or Ask.
- random42 16y ago
  I do not necessarily agree. There are a _lot_ of good _businesses_, which basically _fill the gap_ in other product. xMarks is not like an cut-n-paste iPhone app (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html), which becomes _useless_ after the vendor decides to implement the feature, rather a decent service (Chrome/Mozilla sync does not solve the syncing problem across browsers/iPhone/iPads etc.) which could not its business model.
bond 16y ago
I can't believe a team with so many users hasn't began charging them and when things get rough they want to shut down instead of charging because they think users will not pay? Two million users? Sorry but they know nothing about business and it's worse for the ones who backed them... How on earth they're going to let this go this way?
zacharypinter 16y ago
They might've been doing this already with their Google search enhancements, but why don't they make their free version of the extension hijack (in a very open way to the user) Google queries and insert their own affiliate id so that they get the credit? Seems like an unobtrusive enough way to finance a free product, though it might step on Mozilla's toes.

201 points by willwagner 16y ago

Sorry to see them go. I've been using their extension in Firefox since the beginning and it has always performed exceptionally well while synchronizing thousands of bookmarks.

holychiz 16y ago

sucks to have this ending after all your efforts. Xmarks was a great product. Hats off to you and your team and good luck in your next adventure.

baddox 16y ago

That sucks. How do I synchronize my passwords with Chrome now?

jonursenbach 16y ago
Check out https://lastpass.com/ https://lastpass.com/
- ecaradec 16y ago
  I didn't know about it, it's really great. It's sort of a synchronized keepass with better browser integration. Thanks.
brianwillis 16y ago
Chrome has built in syncing. Options for setup are in the options panel, at the top of the "personal stuff" tab.
ericabiz 16y ago
I use Roboform--it's cross platform/cross browser. Works well. Not free, however, if you have a lot of passwords (most geeks will cross into their paid territory pretty fast.)

wyclif 16y ago

Wow, xmarks is dead because they couldn't "find a scalable business model" with two million users. http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850 http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850

markbao 16y ago
xmarks: @PinboardIN hey if you've got some good ideas, we're all ears! and, of course, pinboardIN: @xmarks the model that has worked well for us is 'charge people money for a useful product or service'
- user24 16y ago
  exactly. The hardest part is having the balls to charge for lemonade in the first place. edit: source, patio11: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668553 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668553
aberkowitz 16y ago
Why don't the Pinboard folks buy out Xmarks?
- adambyrtek 16y ago
  What would they do that? The fact that Xmarks is closing doesn't mean they would have sold it for a few bucks. Not to mention that Pinboard is run just by two guys, as far as I know without any external investment.
  - aberkowitz 16y ago
    I admit that I did not investigate it thoroughly enough. As you concluded, they may not have the money or the man power to acquire Xmarks. Ignoring these vital issues, it appears that they have the necessary passion and expertise in bookmark management.

twodayslate 16y ago

Excellent service. I have been using xmarks for a while.

redstripe 16y ago

I never used them because there are plenty of intranet related bookmarks that I wouldn't want appearing on a search engine. This service could have lead to some nasty data breaches. It's probably better for the internet in general if they fade away. Having said that, it sucks that they ran a popular service that they couldn't monetize.

nod 16y ago

Are there any other sync services that work across both Firefox and Chrome?

benmccann 16y ago
This is my main use case. I would gladly pay for one.

sjs 16y ago

Chrome killed my use of Xmarks. With a consistent, cross-platform browser that has syncing out-of-the-box I no longer need Xmarks. I mainly use other browsers for testing now.

mitjak 16y ago
Ditto here but I can't think of a way to bring those bookmarks over to Safari to sync with the iPhone, aside from using Xmarks. Any ideas?
- sjs 16y ago
  Instapaper. I know that's kind of a cop-out but incidentally it (and Google) have killed my use of bookmarks apart from a relatively svelte bookmarks bar. Instapaper is my reading queue, Google is my long-term memory. Bookmarks are more like shortcuts for me now. The nice thing is that I can "bookmark" any link from any browser that I use, as well as twitter and RSS. And I have them instantly on my iPad, phone, notebook, or any machine with a browser without installing any software or extensions.
  - mitjak 16y ago
    What do you mean by Google? Google Bookmarks, the Chrome sync? Google Notebook? :)
    - sjs 16y ago
      Oh, just Google's search. If I want to find something I previously read I Google it now instead of sifting through crufty, old, poorly organized and needlessly hierarchical bookmarks. Tagged bookmarks would help there I guess (like Delicious) but then you have to tag everything...
- tomica 16y ago
  firefox sync and firefox home?

kylec 16y ago

Huh. I was actually looking for a Chrome bookmark sync for my iPhone two or three weeks ago and I came across Xmarks. I didn't choose it because I was really hoping for a standalone app that would interface with Chrome's built-in bookmark sync. While it's sad to see any popular software company shutter its doors, since it is going away (in a comparatively short 90 days, no less) I'm personally glad I didn't start using it.

jsankey 16y ago

with the emergence of competent sync features built in to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, it’s hard to see users paying for a service that they can now get for free After taking so many knocks, it's easy to be disheartened. But why not at least give this a go? It doesn't involve a large engineering investment - just charge for what you already offer! When the alternative is shutting down, where existing users need to move on anyway, you might as well. Those users might appreciate the value of what they have now that it is about to disappear...

scg 16y ago
Maybe it's because it creates an obligation for them to continue the service for a reasonable amount of time.
- jsankey 16y ago
  Fair point, but how about this: they've committed to 3 months anyway, so why not try charging for 3 months? Just don't touch the money coming in during that period. If they reach the end of that time, and it's not working, issue refunds and shut down. There is some cost to this (transaction fees etc), but seemingly minimal compared to other running costs they've already committed to (because if it fails, the number of transactions will necessarily be low). They might struggle to get people to sign up when there is doubt about the service surviving. But that cat is already out of the bag, and as I alluded to earlier they could also play this to their advantage (charging now is not a money-grab, it's simply a matter of keeping a valuable service viable).
  - Goosey 16y ago
    I agree 100%. This whole thing reminds me of reddit's recent budget issues and how their appeal resulted in a huge boost for them. Just looking at the comments on this blog post make me think that simply including a 'paypal donation' link at the bottom of this blog post ALONE would have generated enough funds to keep them running for for some time. This is a bit of a harsh thing to say... but is it possible they were not able to find a business model due to lack of trying?

bherms 16y ago

Sad to see them go, but this might be a good lesson for several people out there who go into startups with the "make product now, worry about revenue model later" mentality. While that can be successful in many cases, there is a downside as well where many businesses don't survive. Either way, I'll miss xmarks since I use it on all my computers and my phone :( Thanks for the great product for the last several years.

mbyrne 16y ago

They are failing because they can't even ask people to pay for their service. They skipped that and went directly to we are shutting down our servers in 90 days. DHH needs to give them some scream therapy about business models. The one he does about asking your customers to pay for your service.

frossie 16y ago
I am now going to repeat what you said, but with more feeling: We also considered refocusing Xmarks as a freemium sync business, but the prospects there are grim too: with the emergence of competent sync features built in to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, it’s hard to see users paying for a service that they can now get for free. Ask me! Ask me! Why don't you ask me ?!!! Native firefox syncing isn't going to help me sync my Firefox bookmarks to my iPhone, is it? Maybe that is worth something to me, ya know? Isn't it completely ironic, that on top of HN right now is PG's Y-combinator screed, with how important it is to launch as soon as possible with as little functionality as you can in order to let users guide you to what they really want? So users are okay for telling you what features they want but they are not okay for telling you whether they want to pay ?? I mean okay, maybe I am a complete aberration in being willing to pay a few bucks for xmarks. But they didn't even ask. Maybe there would have been enough other aberrations out there to keep it going as a low-key low-turnover service. This is the thing that bothers me with the start-up world - it seems so bi-modal: make it big or go bust. What about a quiet, modest little service that can pay for itself and maybe a bit extra? Bah. I'm sad.
- prawn 16y ago
  This situation always reminds me of @shitmydadsays: "That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you, don't do it for them."
- binomial 16y ago
  Apparently they researched it, probably by asking some sample of the users: http://blog.xmarks.com/?page_id=1883#premium http://blog.xmarks.com/?page_id=1883#premium
- 16y ago

desigooner 16y ago

I, for one, am extremely disappointed to hear this news. I use Xmarks extensively on chrome and firefox across 3 computers. It is so easy to setup and use. I've never managed to get the Chrome sync working as it always hangs up and never finishes setting up. I think I'd have paid for Xmarks as a service.

chime 16y ago
> I've never managed to get the Chrome sync working as it always hangs up and never finishes setting up. Same here. I tried really hard to make Chrome sync work reliably across the multiple devices I use. Kept duplicating my bookmarks, deleting new bookmarks, and just randomly making extra folders. XMarks is just so much nicer and works across all the browsers I use.
sahaj 16y ago
have you tried it in latest beta-branch? it's gotten a lot of features in the last month or so.

naner 16y ago

Oops. I just switched to Xmarks after Chrome's sync ate a chunk of my bookmarks because of a version mismatch.

wccrawford 16y ago
It's okay. I've had so many problems with xmarks and chrome that you'll be glad you didn't get to switch.

LiveTheDream 16y ago

Todd, will you open-source any code?

Caligula 16y ago
Opensourcing the corpus would be more interesting but I suppose with their privacy policy this is a no go.
- LiveTheDream 16y ago
  100% agree. I had that question included in my first draft of my original comment, but figured anonymizing the bookmark data is a very tricky/impossible task so I removed it. See AOL search data[1]. Maybe Xmarks could sent an opt-in request to users and release the data of people who are comfortable with it. I would be fine with it, personally; all my bookmarks are on delicious anyway. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal

larrywright 16y ago

Does anyone else find it odd that two million active users is "not enough users". Most startups would kill for that.

ericabiz 16y ago
Reminds me of the old dot-com screed: We lose money on every customer, but we make it up in volume!

amackera 16y ago

I would pay for Xmarks.

aresant 16y ago

"For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service." Not a bad hypothesis, one I see regularly but 90 days to close sure illustrates the downside and value of searching for that monetization model earlier rather than later.

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
I think it's a fairly shocking hypothesis. My feeling was that the lesson from this is don't go into a business if you don't have at least a vague idea how you're going to make money out of it. I love XMarks and I'll absolutely miss it (and would have considered paying for it) but this would seem to be niaivity in the extreme.
- dillydally 16y ago
  It was founded by Mitch Kapor. I think he knows a thing or two about starting companies...
  - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
    I don't care who founded them, they've just announced that they're closing citing a lack of a viable business model. That would seem to suggest that they might have thought about revenue a little earlier in the process and I have a feeling that with hindsight Mitch Kapor might agree.
    - dillydally 16y ago
      Funny. Do you have any actual information about how early they tried to find a business model? I suspect you don't. So, the situation is this: we have a product lots of people want. The naive business model (freemium) won't work -- a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that. What do you do? Go forward building a very popular product and look for a business model, or quit because you can't think of how to make money from day 1?

kalvin 16y ago

Nobody's mentioned this yet, so: this is particularly notable because it's "Mitch Kapor's startup" (famous for Lotus 1-2-3). Used to be called Foxmarks.

ajg1977 16y ago

Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone. It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to create a profitable business.

deleted 16y ago
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buro9 16y ago
I honestly didn't know xmarks existed, I probably missed it because I used to be more of an Opera user before Chrome with only a fleeting interest in Firefox inbetween. Firefox I moved to because of Weave, and I only fully shifted to Chrome when the sync became full-featured. Xmarks may not be able to compete within a single browser, but the killer play is syncing across them. Having just read the feature list I would happily pay $5 per month for the secure password syncing across browsers. The bookmarks have a little value to me, but the password syncing has pretty significant value.
- twistedanimator 16y ago
  If all you need is secure password syncing, you should check out LastPass (http://lastpass.com/ http://lastpass.com/).
mtr 16y ago
I have a feeling that Xmarks is getting more press by saying that they will shut things down in 3 months versus them making an annoucement that they're shifting to a fremium model. While it could backfire, the additional press coverage could be leveraged to a freemium model if they do it before everyone abandons ship.
fady 16y ago
you're not alone.. I would pay as well

terpua 16y ago

From "build something people want" to "built something people want" to "can't monetize 2 million users." Any other examples of this?

sirn 16y ago
Reddit? But at least they tried charging their users, and it worked.

Ogre 16y ago

I use the Xmarks firefox plugin, but with my own server. It's always supported that. I expect that'll keep working for a while until a newer Firefox breaks the plugin, so I'm still in the same boat of needing to find another sync method. But I might have longer than people who use the service. Or shorter, no way to tell, really.

FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
I'm in the same boat. The article didn't explicitly mention the situation where users are syncing to their own servers. I'm wondering if that would really be impacted seeing as you're not really using any of their server resources?
- Ogre 16y ago
  Hopefully they'll open source the plugin so we can keep it updated for changes to Firefox. Though I'll probably just switch to another solution, especially if there's another that uses my own server. Or maybe just Dropbox. I only switched to Xmarks after Google Browser Sync went away, I guess I should just get used to this.
  - Yopie 16y ago
    While maintaining cross browser capability, I couldn't agree if xmark could work with dropbox or my own server.

wolfrom 16y ago

I find it strange that there are no buyers interested in your user base. I'd love to hear more about the monetization efforts that you attempted, as I would have imagined there should be numerous ways to leverage those users. But, of course, if I was an expert, I'd probably have the capital to make an offer.

est 16y ago

I hope they could open source their code or their sync protocol, or at least release a guide how to setup thirdparty sync servers.

ianferrel 16y ago

My experience with Xmarks was not a great one. I used it when it was first called Foxmarks and enjoyed it. Some time after the name change, I noticed that one of the updates had turned on by default some extra overlays on the google search results page touting their rankings. The blog post suggests that this was a bonus feature, or a value-add, but that's not how I saw it. A previously well-behaved bookmarks sync plugin all of a sudden decided to impose on my preferred search engine. That's a spammy low-class intrusion into my browsing experience. I turned off the feature, but every time I updated the plugin thereafter it was turned back on by default. I jumped ship as soon as Chrome presented a viable alternative.

jawee 16y ago

I used Foxmarks for a long while when I was using Firefox, until Google Browser Sync came along, which has also passed. It was a great idea at the time. In its modern iteration, however, I felt like the best part about it was the inter-browser interoperability. I used it more recently for a time when I was still mostly using Chrome and then Firefox on some machines (such as BSD boxes). All of the newer browser sync options that I am aware of are in a convenient location--built into the browser. Opera, Chrome, Firefox, et all are all getting bookmark sync options. However, I would much like to see a way to sync easily between the different browsers again. This is what made XMarks useful once it evolved past being only for Firefox. For now, I'm using all Opera, partially so I can keep everything together including my mobile devices.

cowmixtoo 16y ago

I'm afraid to go back to Google for bookmark syncing because the last time Google offered the service they shut it down. That's how I got to X/FoxMarks in the first place.

ww520 16y ago

I really hate to see Xmarks shutdown. Been a happy user. For not going the charging user route, could it be that they took some rounds of funding and expanded their company structure and infrastructure greatly to the point that it couldn't be sustained without a huge success? They expanded into the search and other stuff besides bookmark sync'ing. Those are the ones that don't pan out and dragging down the whole company. Instead of shutting down everything, it would be better to keep the bookmark sync part and dump the rest, and start charging users. Not sure whether the investors would go for the low return route.

binomial 16y ago

On an opportunistic note, I do wish they'd everyone access to their "1 billion bookmark corpus", in anonymized form of course.

photon_off 16y ago

xMarks has an amazing set of data. A set of tagged bookmarks on a large enough scale is essentially like running mechanical turk (with 2,000,000 users) on the entire internet (better yet, only bookmark-worthy parts of the internet), and asking it to "describe this page in 10 words or less". The results, I think, are the most accurate description of URLs you could get on such a large scale. Essentially every site that has over a certain amount of bookmarks is guaranteed to be of high quality and very relevant to what it's been tagged as. (The only problem is when sites change, domains expire, etc). When I was making MoreOf.It, I scouted the competition in depth. The only one that stood out was xMarks, and similarity search wasn't even their main gig. They understand the richness of bookmarking data. They've separated URLs into categories, and have the highest ranking sites in those categories. They also nailed similarity pretty well. I might even say their results are better than mine, because they have a much larger index of sites. Two and a half years ago, when I first built a prototype of similarity search, there were hardly any meta-websites. Besides Quantcast and their ilk, and bookmarking websites, and maybe a couple of bullshit "site worth calculators" (which just multiply site traffic by an estimated CPM), there was hardly anything happening in the meta-site space. Now, there are tons more services that cater to people Gooling an actual url or site name. To name a few, CrunchBase, AboutUs.org, BackType, UberVU, SimilarSites, SitesLike, and sites that aggregate results from these (QuarkBase). "Meta" is blossoming, and it seems like xMarks could take advantage of this with their rich dataset. For example, as someone told me I should do, they could sell analytics information to websites about their competitors. If you're ZipCar.com, for example, you would pay to know the following: How have people described zipcar.com in the last (x amount of time), and what are the trends of those tags? How is my popularity vs. an automatically generated list of my competitors [ala: similar sites]. Which competitors are trending, and with which tags? Any new competitors that are breaking through the ranks? Some information could give cues to alter your business: What types of tags are related to my business are trending right now (i.e.: perhaps "bike share" is becoming more and more popular. I think that's valuable information. And, like an arms dealer, you can deal to both sides of competition. With 2,000,000 users organizing this set of data (for their own benefit of course), it's pretty confident sample size and it's win-win for everyone. Frankly, I don't understand what benefits "synchronizing" offers. Why not just store your bookmarks on any number of bookmarking websites (Delicious, Google, etc), and then log-in to that website from whatever browser/computer/device you want? I do, however, see value in the analytics of what people bookmark, and how they bookmark it.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago

In my fantasy world, Marco Arment would buy Xmarks and combine it with Instapaper. I'm sad to see Xmarks disappear without any viable alternative. I'd gladly pay $15-20 per year if that's what it took, but I imagine it could be even cheaper since cloud storage is so cheap: http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/whats-the-cost-of-a-gb-in-the-cloud/ http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/whats-the-cost-of-a-g...

bcrawl 16y ago

"Looking for the list of all auto manufacturers? Or presidential libraries? Or art supply sites? A casual comparison of our results with those of the major search engines would convince you that we were on to something. We recruited a group of non-technical subjects to do a usability test, and it flopped. Sit people in front of a search box and ask them to test it, and their first query is their own name. #FAIL." Why did they assume their primary market was going to be non-technical people? Why not build some thing like stumbleupon of 100 Million bookmarks.

joshu 16y ago

2m users * 1% conversion rate * $10/yr = $100k = probably not enough for a VC-backed startup. My suspicion is that because users just used the browser's internal bookmarks they couldn't easily add affordances that would draw attention, leaving no surface on which to advertise. I guess this is one advantage that delicious had, although breaking the bookmarking paradigm to do so was very painful in other ways. I no longer believe startups who claim their value proposition is "the data will be really valuable someday."

jonknee 16y ago
That would be $200k, but still not enough to make your conclusion any different.
- joshu 16y ago
  oops. indeed.
robk 16y ago
Yep "probably not enough for a VC-backed startup" is the key here. This would have been a nice bootstrapped business. For them taking VC put them on a road that unfortunately wasn't the right one for them and forced them to swing for a bigger outcome than was possible. Sad.
- dillydally 16y ago
  $100k is an ok number for a one-person outfit, but it would be hard to support even one employee on that number. In face, their current model of altering the Google SERPs almost certainly generates more revenue.
DevX101 16y ago
How does delicious make money? I love your product and use it almost every day, but it's not immediately obvious to me that there's any advertising.
gvb 16y ago

fauigerzigerk 16y ago

It's always sad when someone's dreams are shattered. But what I don't get is why a bookmark syncing service needs venture capital, employees, a CEO and whatnot. There may not be a business model that supports all that, but there may be a business model that pays for the labor actually required to provide a syncing service. In a way this is like shutting down all the cafes that failed to become Starbucks.

pclark 16y ago
You don't get why a bookmark syncing service needs venture capital, employees, a CEO and what not? Web applications don't just grow on trees ...
bstrong 16y ago
My guess is that this has a lot to do with when they started. In 2006, the cloud platforms we take for granted today didn't exist. Running a service meant buying servers, hiring an ops team, etc. Starting today, you could probably bring a sync service up on App Engine in a few weeks and operate it for a couple hundred bucks a month. I started my last company in 2005, and I've often thought that if we had started a couple of years later when the cloud platforms were available, we could have been a lot more successful. Instead we built a product and an organization around an obsolete technology stack with a high cost structure, and there was no going back.

Tichy 16y ago

Aren't there several YC companies who do searches of browsing history? At the moment I rely on Firefox awesome bar, but I have a nagging feeling that it is not reliable (keep not finding sites I was sure I had bookmarked). So a better way to search and organize bookmarks is still being called for. I can't imagine that there isn't a market for better bookmarking...

kumark23 16y ago

Our newly launched service Zukmo is a good alternative for Xmarks. I just posted a request for it to be reviewed (under Ask HN): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735218 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1735218

deleted 16y ago

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EvanMiller 16y ago

Lessons learned: 1. Adding a feature to someone else's product is a risky business model. If it's popular, the product-maker will implement your feature, at which point your goose is cooked. 2. Adding a free feature to someone else's free product isn't even risky. It is among the surest methods of losing money. 3. Know when to sell. The missed opportunity here was search. With their data and methods, Xmarks was able to improve query results for a predictable fraction of searches. At this point (2008), they should have sold to one of the up-and-coming search engines -- Windows Live or Ask.

random42 16y ago
I do not necessarily agree. There are a _lot_ of good _businesses_, which basically _fill the gap_ in other product. xMarks is not like an cut-n-paste iPhone app (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html), which becomes _useless_ after the vendor decides to implement the feature, rather a decent service (Chrome/Mozilla sync does not solve the syncing problem across browsers/iPhone/iPads etc.) which could not its business model.

bond 16y ago

I can't believe a team with so many users hasn't began charging them and when things get rough they want to shut down instead of charging because they think users will not pay? Two million users? Sorry but they know nothing about business and it's worse for the ones who backed them... How on earth they're going to let this go this way?

zacharypinter 16y ago

They might've been doing this already with their Google search enhancements, but why don't they make their free version of the extension hijack (in a very open way to the user) Google queries and insert their own affiliate id so that they get the credit? Seems like an unobtrusive enough way to finance a free product, though it might step on Mozilla's toes.