6 ms·

Xmarks not quite dead yet

79 points by nod 16y ago

w1ntermute 16y ago
Why didn't they explore the possibility of being acquired before just deciding to drop everything and shut down? Or maybe this was their strategy for getting enough publicity to get more favorable acquisition offers...
- agravier 16y ago
  My understanding is that they did try to sell Xmarks, but noone would want of them until this announcement and the subsequent massively suportive reaction from the community that revealed that people seem do infact be ready to pay for the service.
- aditya 16y ago
  reminds me of the tr.im snafu... and then they ended up open sourcing everything because no one would pay 80-100k for it. the Xmarks folks seem more honorable, though.
- aresant 16y ago
  They tried to sell twice Once reported in "final" blog post - http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=1886 http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=1886 Once reported by Kara Swisher - http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100928/the-long-goodbye-xmarks-tried-to-sell-twice-before-closing-down-with-class/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100928/the-long-goodbye-xmarks-...
nod 16y ago
tl;dr: 27K people have pledged $10/year, they'll be viable with 100K
- hop 16y ago
  There is a big difference between anonymously pledging and cutting the check, but who knows.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Yes, the one time I tried that the rate was about 100:0. It sure dented my confidence for a bit, I thought we had a deal there.
    - SkyMarshal 16y ago
      Yeah, they probably should have skipped the pledge step and gone straight to the pay me step. Capitalize the attention while you've got it, and use real money as your metric for staying open or not. If you don't get enough, refund the credit card charges and close.
- Tichy 16y ago
  What are their costs, bandwidth and storage?
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
Why don't they just charge for their iPhone app and use a fremium model? I'm blown away that they can't figure out a way to monetize 2 million users. If they don't get acquired I will be very shocked. I pledged that I am willing to pay, it's a bargain for how useful their service is. Also, why don't they just use kickstarter.com??
dasil003 16y ago
I don't mean to be cynical, but... well played Xmarks, well played.
cyunker 16y ago
Too late. I've already moved to Chrome sync.
- cyunker 16y ago
  Sorry for the snarky remark. I think Xmarks is an excellent service and I've been a happy user for 6 months+. But when you send out an email saying you're done, and I move my bookmarks over to another service...well..... For the record, Xmarks today is better than Chrome sync. If things work out for them, I'll move back.
  - bmelton 16y ago
    I agree that it's better, but I don't think it's so much better that I'd be willing to pay them even $1 a year for the improvement. It would take them being insanely better, and offering something that I really need (the 'which bookmarks go where' feature is almost it) to entice me into paying for something I'm getting in-built onto my browser that is free. It sucks for them, really, because even a year ago I'd have happily paid them the money. Cross-browser (Firefox -> Chrome sync) would have been worth it then, as would the segregation of 'personal' bookmarks from my work PC, but at this point, Chrome sync is in place, it's the only browser I use, and what's left just doesn't convince me to give them money. I wish them well, but they should have been charging years ago really.
pvg 16y ago
Xmarks might not be quite dead yet but it probably will and should be. They seem really attached to the idea that the data (or as they ponderously call it, 'the corpus') they have is very valuable. $9 million (with an impressive $2 mil/year burn rate) later they haven't figured out a way to extract any of that elusive value. Browser bookmark sync is becoming a built-in feature in many popular browsers. Cross-browser support is an edge case that overlaps with the functionality of a number of web-based bookmarking services which generally offer a richer and more useful feature set than in-browser bookmarking. In the period of about a week they've persuaded fewer than 30k of their users to maybe pay them $10/yr. This is probably not all that surprising given the above and the fact they've already announced that should they run into difficulties, they'll simply give up. Short of Stockholm Syndrome, it's hard to imagine why anyone would choose to rely on their service going forward, even if someone is foolish enough to buy them out.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  > even if someone is foolish enough to buy them out. Well, wait a bit longer and the price just might become right.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Problem is I stopped using Delicious years ago. I need my bookmarks in my browser. If I have to go to a website to find something, that's going to be Google or DDG. A great solution would be for Delicious/Yahoo to buy Xmarks and integrate the two technologies - your bookmarks are stored on Delicious as they currently are, but synched to every supported browser you use.
  - pvg 16y ago
    Problem is I stopped using Delicious years ago. That sounds like a personal problem! More seriously, there are several extensions that provide in-browser interfaces and local storage for bookmarking services. For the hardcore bookmarker, there are even a desktop apps - the ones I know of for OS X are Delibar and Pukka. Personally, I don't find the browser integration extensions terribly useful. In the case of Firefox, the Bookmark Manager is probably slower than using just about any bookmarking service. It's certainly slower and clunkier than pinboard. Firefox's Live Bookmarks can also be used to give you a local menu of bookmarks if you point it at the RSS feed of a bookmarking service. I think there are extensions that let you do that in Chrome and Safari as well.
wyclif 16y ago
@PinboardIN Wow, xmarks is dead because they couldn't "find a scalable business model" with two million users. @xmarks @PinboardIN hey if you've got some good ideas, we're all ears! @PinboardIN @xmarks the model that has worked well for us is 'charge people money for a useful product or service' http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850 http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850
- jwegan 16y ago
  I'm surprised they didn't think of this before. Reddit did pretty much the same thing recently with 'Reddit Gold' which so far has been very successful for them.
- hellweaver666 16y ago
  I love pinboard.in - I signed up when they were charging about $1 per signup and it works perfectly for me, the guy that runs it even setup a feature on my request and within about 24 hours of me requesting it! (tag specific user RSS feeds).
McKittrick 16y ago
It's just a flesh wound! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
mike-cardwell 16y ago
I would happily have paid $10/year, but as soon as they made the announcement I went looking for alternatives. I was surprised to find that if you're happy just syncing between Firefox installs, "Firefox Sync" does everything XMarks does, (Bookmarks, Passwords, Preferences, History and Tabs) but with a slicker interface. And it will also be built into Firefox 4 rather than having to install the addon... I no longer see the point in paying XMarks for it...
- ldh 16y ago
  There are fine solutions within any single browser. But that's just a non-starter for those who don't want to be restricted to one browser across all environments.
  - mike-cardwell 16y ago
    I tend to stick to one browser across my various machines. If I wanted to start using Chrome I'd just export my bookmarks from Firefox, import them into Chrome and set up syncing with Chrome.
Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
Is the problem with starting free that you get people used to the idea that this is not a service you pay for? Freemium (get a small service for free, pay for a better one) is one thing but this is "this used to be free, now it's not". At the very least that jars. I think the real issue is that the likes of ChromeSync make the longevity of this business model very questionable. Joel Spolsky once described this sort of thing as grabbing nickels from the path of an on-coming steamroller - you're making money out of something that the product should or will inevitably do as a standard feature. Yes there is money there for a while but inevitably the steamroller is going to flatten you.
iburattini 16y ago
This is a very sad news...... I know I can find other services, but I added this to my mom and dad's computers, and they do have now all their bookmarks + passwords saved. No, they don't even know that (Xmarks) is running, and I don't even know how to tell then "hey, you should pledge 10 € here..." That made me think: how many moms and dads are using this service??
- leonroy 16y ago
  My mum, my dad, my sisters, my wife, my grandpa, my grandma, my aunt, my cousin... Only one person's willing to pay in my family...me :-P
FindSimilar 16y ago
It is a sad story. Xmarks is the best sync tool now but competition is coming from two big guys.
Terretta 16y ago
I like to be able to use whatever browser I want, whenever I want, use the browser's native bookmarking, and have new bookmarks show up in whatever browser I run next (not to mention show up on iOS Safari). Bookmark something in Chrome, leave my desk, check the bookmark on the iPad. Surf on the iPad on the train, bookmark some things, review those bookmarks in Firefox on the PC. The built-in bookmark syncs don't do this, unless you're willing to only use a single browser on everything. Xmarks does this. If you're a developer using multiple browsers, seems like Xmarks would be essential kit.
- blaix 16y ago
  It is definitely essential. It is one of the first things I install when setting up a new computer.
blaix 16y ago
When I read the announcement that they were closing, my first thought was "I would have paid money for this". I'm glad I may be able to if it means I'll get to keep using it.
- DougWebb 16y ago
  When I read the initial announcement, and the subsequent comments, by first thought was "Oh, I didn't know Firefox provides this functionality now." I switched over immediately, and I don't plan to go back. Occasionally it's annoying to only have my bookmarks on one browser, but I typically only use one browser anyway. Most of the time I'm on Firefox, but when I need the corporate intranet I use IE. I have no desire to share all of my bookmarks with the intranet's ActiveX controls, so I'm happy to not be syncing them over.

79 points by nod 16y ago

Why didn't they explore the possibility of being acquired before just deciding to drop everything and shut down? Or maybe this was their strategy for getting enough publicity to get more favorable acquisition offers...

agravier 16y ago
My understanding is that they did try to sell Xmarks, but noone would want of them until this announcement and the subsequent massively suportive reaction from the community that revealed that people seem do infact be ready to pay for the service.
aditya 16y ago
reminds me of the tr.im snafu... and then they ended up open sourcing everything because no one would pay 80-100k for it. the Xmarks folks seem more honorable, though.
aresant 16y ago
They tried to sell twice Once reported in "final" blog post - http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=1886 http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=1886 Once reported by Kara Swisher - http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100928/the-long-goodbye-xmarks-tried-to-sell-twice-before-closing-down-with-class/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100928/the-long-goodbye-xmarks-...

nod 16y ago

tl;dr: 27K people have pledged $10/year, they'll be viable with 100K

hop 16y ago
There is a big difference between anonymously pledging and cutting the check, but who knows.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Yes, the one time I tried that the rate was about 100:0. It sure dented my confidence for a bit, I thought we had a deal there.
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    Yeah, they probably should have skipped the pledge step and gone straight to the pay me step. Capitalize the attention while you've got it, and use real money as your metric for staying open or not. If you don't get enough, refund the credit card charges and close.
Tichy 16y ago
What are their costs, bandwidth and storage?

lotusleaf1987 16y ago

Why don't they just charge for their iPhone app and use a fremium model? I'm blown away that they can't figure out a way to monetize 2 million users. If they don't get acquired I will be very shocked. I pledged that I am willing to pay, it's a bargain for how useful their service is. Also, why don't they just use kickstarter.com??

dasil003 16y ago

I don't mean to be cynical, but... well played Xmarks, well played.

cyunker 16y ago

Too late. I've already moved to Chrome sync.

cyunker 16y ago
Sorry for the snarky remark. I think Xmarks is an excellent service and I've been a happy user for 6 months+. But when you send out an email saying you're done, and I move my bookmarks over to another service...well..... For the record, Xmarks today is better than Chrome sync. If things work out for them, I'll move back.
- bmelton 16y ago
  I agree that it's better, but I don't think it's so much better that I'd be willing to pay them even $1 a year for the improvement. It would take them being insanely better, and offering something that I really need (the 'which bookmarks go where' feature is almost it) to entice me into paying for something I'm getting in-built onto my browser that is free. It sucks for them, really, because even a year ago I'd have happily paid them the money. Cross-browser (Firefox -> Chrome sync) would have been worth it then, as would the segregation of 'personal' bookmarks from my work PC, but at this point, Chrome sync is in place, it's the only browser I use, and what's left just doesn't convince me to give them money. I wish them well, but they should have been charging years ago really.

pvg 16y ago

Xmarks might not be quite dead yet but it probably will and should be. They seem really attached to the idea that the data (or as they ponderously call it, 'the corpus') they have is very valuable. $9 million (with an impressive $2 mil/year burn rate) later they haven't figured out a way to extract any of that elusive value. Browser bookmark sync is becoming a built-in feature in many popular browsers. Cross-browser support is an edge case that overlaps with the functionality of a number of web-based bookmarking services which generally offer a richer and more useful feature set than in-browser bookmarking. In the period of about a week they've persuaded fewer than 30k of their users to maybe pay them $10/yr. This is probably not all that surprising given the above and the fact they've already announced that should they run into difficulties, they'll simply give up. Short of Stockholm Syndrome, it's hard to imagine why anyone would choose to rely on their service going forward, even if someone is foolish enough to buy them out.

jacquesm 16y ago
> even if someone is foolish enough to buy them out. Well, wait a bit longer and the price just might become right.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Problem is I stopped using Delicious years ago. I need my bookmarks in my browser. If I have to go to a website to find something, that's going to be Google or DDG. A great solution would be for Delicious/Yahoo to buy Xmarks and integrate the two technologies - your bookmarks are stored on Delicious as they currently are, but synched to every supported browser you use.
- pvg 16y ago
  Problem is I stopped using Delicious years ago. That sounds like a personal problem! More seriously, there are several extensions that provide in-browser interfaces and local storage for bookmarking services. For the hardcore bookmarker, there are even a desktop apps - the ones I know of for OS X are Delibar and Pukka. Personally, I don't find the browser integration extensions terribly useful. In the case of Firefox, the Bookmark Manager is probably slower than using just about any bookmarking service. It's certainly slower and clunkier than pinboard. Firefox's Live Bookmarks can also be used to give you a local menu of bookmarks if you point it at the RSS feed of a bookmarking service. I think there are extensions that let you do that in Chrome and Safari as well.

wyclif 16y ago

@PinboardIN Wow, xmarks is dead because they couldn't "find a scalable business model" with two million users. @xmarks @PinboardIN hey if you've got some good ideas, we're all ears! @PinboardIN @xmarks the model that has worked well for us is 'charge people money for a useful product or service' http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850 http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850

jwegan 16y ago
I'm surprised they didn't think of this before. Reddit did pretty much the same thing recently with 'Reddit Gold' which so far has been very successful for them.
hellweaver666 16y ago
I love pinboard.in - I signed up when they were charging about $1 per signup and it works perfectly for me, the guy that runs it even setup a feature on my request and within about 24 hours of me requesting it! (tag specific user RSS feeds).

McKittrick 16y ago

It's just a flesh wound! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

mike-cardwell 16y ago

I would happily have paid $10/year, but as soon as they made the announcement I went looking for alternatives. I was surprised to find that if you're happy just syncing between Firefox installs, "Firefox Sync" does everything XMarks does, (Bookmarks, Passwords, Preferences, History and Tabs) but with a slicker interface. And it will also be built into Firefox 4 rather than having to install the addon... I no longer see the point in paying XMarks for it...

ldh 16y ago
There are fine solutions within any single browser. But that's just a non-starter for those who don't want to be restricted to one browser across all environments.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  I tend to stick to one browser across my various machines. If I wanted to start using Chrome I'd just export my bookmarks from Firefox, import them into Chrome and set up syncing with Chrome.

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago

Is the problem with starting free that you get people used to the idea that this is not a service you pay for? Freemium (get a small service for free, pay for a better one) is one thing but this is "this used to be free, now it's not". At the very least that jars. I think the real issue is that the likes of ChromeSync make the longevity of this business model very questionable. Joel Spolsky once described this sort of thing as grabbing nickels from the path of an on-coming steamroller - you're making money out of something that the product should or will inevitably do as a standard feature. Yes there is money there for a while but inevitably the steamroller is going to flatten you.

iburattini 16y ago

This is a very sad news...... I know I can find other services, but I added this to my mom and dad's computers, and they do have now all their bookmarks + passwords saved. No, they don't even know that (Xmarks) is running, and I don't even know how to tell then "hey, you should pledge 10 € here..." That made me think: how many moms and dads are using this service??

leonroy 16y ago
My mum, my dad, my sisters, my wife, my grandpa, my grandma, my aunt, my cousin... Only one person's willing to pay in my family...me :-P

FindSimilar 16y ago

It is a sad story. Xmarks is the best sync tool now but competition is coming from two big guys.

Terretta 16y ago

I like to be able to use whatever browser I want, whenever I want, use the browser's native bookmarking, and have new bookmarks show up in whatever browser I run next (not to mention show up on iOS Safari). Bookmark something in Chrome, leave my desk, check the bookmark on the iPad. Surf on the iPad on the train, bookmark some things, review those bookmarks in Firefox on the PC. The built-in bookmark syncs don't do this, unless you're willing to only use a single browser on everything. Xmarks does this. If you're a developer using multiple browsers, seems like Xmarks would be essential kit.

blaix 16y ago
It is definitely essential. It is one of the first things I install when setting up a new computer.

blaix 16y ago

When I read the announcement that they were closing, my first thought was "I would have paid money for this". I'm glad I may be able to if it means I'll get to keep using it.

DougWebb 16y ago
When I read the initial announcement, and the subsequent comments, by first thought was "Oh, I didn't know Firefox provides this functionality now." I switched over immediately, and I don't plan to go back. Occasionally it's annoying to only have my bookmarks on one browser, but I typically only use one browser anyway. Most of the time I'm on Firefox, but when I need the corporate intranet I use IE. I have no desire to share all of my bookmarks with the intranet's ActiveX controls, so I'm happy to not be syncing them over.