5 ms·

A different approach to bookmarking

43 points by copyto 16y ago

skymt 16y ago
(Edit: Disregard this comment. Copyto has a fine business plan, a flat $1.99/month fee.) I have a policy of only investing my time in a service if I know their monetization plan, to avoid getting burned by shutdowns or features moved to premium account plans. Does Copyto have one yet? I see no ads, the privacy policy is strict enough to make data-mining impossible, and there doesn't seem to be a way to pay. Other than that, this looks great. It has all the features I use on Pinboard, and the thumbnail view could be handy.
- pyre 16y ago
  Yea. That was my impression too. Pinboard has a monetization model that looks to be pretty stable. This doesn't look like it necessarily has a business plan other than 'social.'
- onur 16y ago
  I noticed that after you signup there is a Paypal subscription fee of 1.99 per month
- telemachos 16y ago
  I'm confused by your comment and the replies to it. Maybe the page changed since you posted it, but if you visit the sign up page[1] now, it says (in big letters, right up at the top left): just for $1.99/month no limit, no fancy premium upgrades. no contract needed, cancel anytime. [1] http://copyto.co/signup.php http://copyto.co/signup.php
  - skymt 16y ago
    Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see that. Disregard my comment.
timbonicus 16y ago
This seems like a very similar service to the wildly popular Instapaper. I'm curious what the difference is or how Copyto plans to differentiate themselves.
- onur 16y ago
  I guess the difference might be the tools they provide to drag and select parts of pages and only save them to read later
- StavrosK 16y ago
  Man, I always get the same observation with historio.us as well. How are they similar? Instapaper saves links for later, historious saves the full content of bookmarks and allows you to perform full text search on it. They're nothing alike.
nekgrim 16y ago
Any way to import bookmarks from delicious/diigo/pinboard ? Seems like the others bookmarking services, i don't really see the 'different approach'... maybe the screenshot part ?
benatkin 16y ago
Got an email address? I don't see any email addresses or feedback forms on the public site.
- blacktip 16y ago
  I guess they forgot to add it on the public site. Their email is support (at) copyto.co
abhishektwr 16y ago
Just a feedback- design is broken in IE7 & IE8. Otherwise it looks good service to me.
prknight 16y ago
This seems like a step in the right direction, but I'd love to see a bookmarking service make accessing and utilizing bookmarks easy by 1) indexing bookmarked pages and extracting keywords & identifying content & enabling tag based search + auto-organized index 2) offer an easy to use interface for accessing the bookmarks. The main annoyance I have with bookmarking present day bookmarking tools is the amount of steps it requires. Selecting text to be bookmarked is nice but it's an extra action. I don't want to have to file/tag/place in folder, mouse drag and click around just to bookmark a page. Why not a single click? *currently using the note in reader bookmarklet for google reader
- zeynel1 16y ago
  My experience is that the easier to bookmark a page the least likely I will get back to it (except the two dozen or so in the bookmarks bar in Chrome). I built for my own use with Google App Engine this service I call "ting" (sample search: http://ting-1.appspot.com/rt?rt=startup http://ting-1.appspot.com/rt?rt=startup) and with each link I want to save I enter tags and a summary; this way I know I only save pages that I really believe will be useful to me in the long run. (I also cut and paste the link, making it even more time consuming)
revorad 16y ago
I stronly suggest you experiment with charging a one-time fee based on your estimated lifetime value of a customer. $1.99 in monthly fees for a personal utility like this is not too much to pay, it's the mental overhead which stops me from buying it. And you lose money per transaction. Pinboard's pricing model is great here. A one-time fee of around $10 to use the service and $25 per annum archival fees. You should consider doing something similar.
- nekgrim 16y ago
  Pinboard has also a roadmap, so you know what to expect in the next months. The monthly fee is a good "you can stop when you want" argument. If a new bookmark service with an innovative feature comes out in 2 months, you can change without hesitation. Maybe propose both choices. Something like 22$/year or 1,99$/month.
  - idlewords 16y ago
    I think a recurring fee for this kind of service is a bad idea. Either you spend some time each month deciding whether you got $X of value, or you choose not to bother and feel vaguely taken advantage of (at least, that's my own personal experience with Audible.com and other monthly services). Thanks for reminding me to go update the roadmap :-)
amirhhz 16y ago
Sorry if I'm missing something, but what would make me use this instead of Evernote? The free version has served me nicely for a while and it also does the nice thumbnailing feature.
StavrosK 16y ago
To be "honest", "different" here means "almost identical to historious, diigo, evernote", etc. There already are plenty of players in the space, but delicious has spoilt users enough that they don't want to pay for these services.
- blacktip 16y ago
  There are some differences though like copyto lets you save selected parts of a page which is kind of the whole purpose behind
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    Hmm, I thought Evernote lets you do that as well. Regardless, though, competition is always good!
    - blacktip 16y ago
      Evernote does pretty much everything thats for sure. 30 million funding should do the trick. Historious is also a nice alternative though, at least they have a stable path only on bookmarking. Anyways competition really makes services better.
      - StavrosK 16y ago
        Haha yep, you're spot on for evernote...
- wyclif 16y ago
  Exactly right. I'm not going to pay for a bookmarking service when I adopted pinboard.in early, before it cost anything, and also have an Evernote account. The market is already quite crowded by very smart people.
- hendler 16y ago
  Even though it's a crowded space, there are demographics/verticals that different versions of this kind of tool could appeal to. Small feature differences and simplicity can be a selling point, for example. Any one know who the team is?
Rickasaurus 16y ago
Does anyone know if they support exporting bookmarks just in case I don't feel like paying them $24/year for bookmarks anymore?
idlewords 16y ago
Looks like an awfully familiar approach to bookmarking from where I sit. But hey, welcome!
jamesbritt 16y ago
"You will be able to select all or some of the content on your bookmarked page to save it as long as you want." Really? Even if copyright holders litigiously suggest otherwise? Of more practical value, does it work on pages that use JavaScript to dynamically render a page?
- copyto 16y ago
  Copyright issue applies to all services that allow you to save a page, even Google would be guilty for caching. It is up to the user to judge for a copyright infringement before saving a page.
  - cskau 16y ago
    Since I'm currently exploring some of the same problems, I'd like to ask further.. How do you guard yourself against user-shared copyrighted content* ? Do you delete on request from the copyright holders? Do you weed out in the shared content once in a while? Do you have some kind of policy or agreement transfering the infrigement to the sharing user in such cases ? *Say, a user has access to some content behind a paywall, but shares it un-blocked through your service.
    - copyto 16y ago
      We have to delete public content that has been requested to be deleted by the copyright holders. In such a case the user will be notified about the infirigement and the possible removal of his content.
- blacktip 16y ago
  If you have an example site that dynamically renders a page I could try it out and show you the result
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    http://lifehacker.com/#!5785555/how-perfectionism-can-lead-to-procrastination-and-what-to-do-about-it http://lifehacker.com/#!5785555/how-perfectionism-can-lead-t... for example. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Firefox will do a successful Save As of the content, even though View Source only shows the original page. And the ScrapBook plug-in also saves the page correctly.
u48998 16y ago
Amazing when HN generate so much comment on services with no About section.
gab007 16y ago
I am not usually using IE, but the site looks bad under IE8, I can confirm that. But you know what..? I would not bother fixing it if I were you. Seriously, I don't think it's worth the trouble.
- copyto 16y ago
  Thats something I'm really ashamed of. Until having some kind of help on my side I also don't think it would be worth the trouble.
ticktock 16y ago
1.99 a month? no way. This is free and gmail is free and is full text searchable: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/email-this/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/email-this/

43 points by copyto 16y ago

skymt 16y ago

(Edit: Disregard this comment. Copyto has a fine business plan, a flat $1.99/month fee.) I have a policy of only investing my time in a service if I know their monetization plan, to avoid getting burned by shutdowns or features moved to premium account plans. Does Copyto have one yet? I see no ads, the privacy policy is strict enough to make data-mining impossible, and there doesn't seem to be a way to pay. Other than that, this looks great. It has all the features I use on Pinboard, and the thumbnail view could be handy.

pyre 16y ago
Yea. That was my impression too. Pinboard has a monetization model that looks to be pretty stable. This doesn't look like it necessarily has a business plan other than 'social.'
onur 16y ago
I noticed that after you signup there is a Paypal subscription fee of 1.99 per month
telemachos 16y ago
I'm confused by your comment and the replies to it. Maybe the page changed since you posted it, but if you visit the sign up page[1] now, it says (in big letters, right up at the top left): just for $1.99/month no limit, no fancy premium upgrades. no contract needed, cancel anytime. [1] http://copyto.co/signup.php http://copyto.co/signup.php
- skymt 16y ago
  Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see that. Disregard my comment.

timbonicus 16y ago

This seems like a very similar service to the wildly popular Instapaper. I'm curious what the difference is or how Copyto plans to differentiate themselves.

onur 16y ago
I guess the difference might be the tools they provide to drag and select parts of pages and only save them to read later
StavrosK 16y ago
Man, I always get the same observation with historio.us as well. How are they similar? Instapaper saves links for later, historious saves the full content of bookmarks and allows you to perform full text search on it. They're nothing alike.

nekgrim 16y ago

Any way to import bookmarks from delicious/diigo/pinboard ? Seems like the others bookmarking services, i don't really see the 'different approach'... maybe the screenshot part ?

benatkin 16y ago

Got an email address? I don't see any email addresses or feedback forms on the public site.

blacktip 16y ago
I guess they forgot to add it on the public site. Their email is support (at) copyto.co

abhishektwr 16y ago

Just a feedback- design is broken in IE7 & IE8. Otherwise it looks good service to me.

prknight 16y ago

This seems like a step in the right direction, but I'd love to see a bookmarking service make accessing and utilizing bookmarks easy by 1) indexing bookmarked pages and extracting keywords & identifying content & enabling tag based search + auto-organized index 2) offer an easy to use interface for accessing the bookmarks. The main annoyance I have with bookmarking present day bookmarking tools is the amount of steps it requires. Selecting text to be bookmarked is nice but it's an extra action. I don't want to have to file/tag/place in folder, mouse drag and click around just to bookmark a page. Why not a single click? *currently using the note in reader bookmarklet for google reader

zeynel1 16y ago
My experience is that the easier to bookmark a page the least likely I will get back to it (except the two dozen or so in the bookmarks bar in Chrome). I built for my own use with Google App Engine this service I call "ting" (sample search: http://ting-1.appspot.com/rt?rt=startup http://ting-1.appspot.com/rt?rt=startup) and with each link I want to save I enter tags and a summary; this way I know I only save pages that I really believe will be useful to me in the long run. (I also cut and paste the link, making it even more time consuming)

revorad 16y ago

I stronly suggest you experiment with charging a one-time fee based on your estimated lifetime value of a customer. $1.99 in monthly fees for a personal utility like this is not too much to pay, it's the mental overhead which stops me from buying it. And you lose money per transaction. Pinboard's pricing model is great here. A one-time fee of around $10 to use the service and $25 per annum archival fees. You should consider doing something similar.

nekgrim 16y ago
Pinboard has also a roadmap, so you know what to expect in the next months. The monthly fee is a good "you can stop when you want" argument. If a new bookmark service with an innovative feature comes out in 2 months, you can change without hesitation. Maybe propose both choices. Something like 22$/year or 1,99$/month.
- idlewords 16y ago
  I think a recurring fee for this kind of service is a bad idea. Either you spend some time each month deciding whether you got $X of value, or you choose not to bother and feel vaguely taken advantage of (at least, that's my own personal experience with Audible.com and other monthly services). Thanks for reminding me to go update the roadmap :-)

amirhhz 16y ago

Sorry if I'm missing something, but what would make me use this instead of Evernote? The free version has served me nicely for a while and it also does the nice thumbnailing feature.

StavrosK 16y ago

To be "honest", "different" here means "almost identical to historious, diigo, evernote", etc. There already are plenty of players in the space, but delicious has spoilt users enough that they don't want to pay for these services.

blacktip 16y ago
There are some differences though like copyto lets you save selected parts of a page which is kind of the whole purpose behind
- StavrosK 16y ago
  Hmm, I thought Evernote lets you do that as well. Regardless, though, competition is always good!
  - blacktip 16y ago
    Evernote does pretty much everything thats for sure. 30 million funding should do the trick. Historious is also a nice alternative though, at least they have a stable path only on bookmarking. Anyways competition really makes services better.
    - StavrosK 16y ago
      Haha yep, you're spot on for evernote...
wyclif 16y ago
Exactly right. I'm not going to pay for a bookmarking service when I adopted pinboard.in early, before it cost anything, and also have an Evernote account. The market is already quite crowded by very smart people.
hendler 16y ago
Even though it's a crowded space, there are demographics/verticals that different versions of this kind of tool could appeal to. Small feature differences and simplicity can be a selling point, for example. Any one know who the team is?

Rickasaurus 16y ago

Does anyone know if they support exporting bookmarks just in case I don't feel like paying them $24/year for bookmarks anymore?

idlewords 16y ago

Looks like an awfully familiar approach to bookmarking from where I sit. But hey, welcome!

jamesbritt 16y ago

"You will be able to select all or some of the content on your bookmarked page to save it as long as you want." Really? Even if copyright holders litigiously suggest otherwise? Of more practical value, does it work on pages that use JavaScript to dynamically render a page?

copyto 16y ago
Copyright issue applies to all services that allow you to save a page, even Google would be guilty for caching. It is up to the user to judge for a copyright infringement before saving a page.
- cskau 16y ago
  Since I'm currently exploring some of the same problems, I'd like to ask further.. How do you guard yourself against user-shared copyrighted content* ? Do you delete on request from the copyright holders? Do you weed out in the shared content once in a while? Do you have some kind of policy or agreement transfering the infrigement to the sharing user in such cases ? *Say, a user has access to some content behind a paywall, but shares it un-blocked through your service.
  - copyto 16y ago
    We have to delete public content that has been requested to be deleted by the copyright holders. In such a case the user will be notified about the infirigement and the possible removal of his content.
blacktip 16y ago
If you have an example site that dynamically renders a page I could try it out and show you the result
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  http://lifehacker.com/#!5785555/how-perfectionism-can-lead-to-procrastination-and-what-to-do-about-it http://lifehacker.com/#!5785555/how-perfectionism-can-lead-t... for example. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Firefox will do a successful Save As of the content, even though View Source only shows the original page. And the ScrapBook plug-in also saves the page correctly.

u48998 16y ago

Amazing when HN generate so much comment on services with no About section.

gab007 16y ago

I am not usually using IE, but the site looks bad under IE8, I can confirm that. But you know what..? I would not bother fixing it if I were you. Seriously, I don't think it's worth the trouble.

copyto 16y ago
Thats something I'm really ashamed of. Until having some kind of help on my side I also don't think it would be worth the trouble.

ticktock 16y ago

1.99 a month? no way. This is free and gmail is free and is full text searchable: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/email-this/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/email-this/