12 ms·

Pinboard Turns Five

491 points by thisisblurry 12y ago

pixelmonkey 12y ago
Great essay and reflection, full of some funny nuggets: "My strategy of pre-emptively antagonizing anyone who might possibly have an interest in acquiring or funding the site has worked wonderfully." "I enjoy the looking-glass aspect of our industry, where running a mildly profitable small business makes me a crazy maverick not afraid to break all the rules."
firebones 12y ago
I love Maciej's writing. His recent post on idlewords.com about his trip to Yemen was great, and his annual reports on Pinboard are up there with Buffett in terms of eloquence and wry humor that just skirts the edges of being laconic. I also love Pinboard, as well as joshu's original del.icio.us, and all services that find that completely narrow utility that I like to call "stripped and liberated". Stripped in the sense that they seek to do one thing well, on the face of humanity, forever. Liberated in the sense that they are liberated from the need to be beholden to investors or broader corporate strategies which shred their utility and focus in service of some other imperative. Has the day of the "stripped and liberated" service come and gone? Or are there still opportunities waiting to be discovered?
- initself 12y ago
  I don't know but I thank you for coming up with just the right phrase to describe this aesthetic! May stripped and liberated computing never die!
  - e12e 12y ago
    I don't know, "liberated" associates strongly with "liberty" for me -- as in the software freedoms, and the users right/opportunity to self-host, like email. I think "stripped and independent" better conveys what op means. I suppose in the tradition of "indy" that should be shortened to "strindy" or something. Or perhaps just "an indy service" (stripped aesthetic implied by virtue of being "indy").
- walterbell 12y ago
  Stardock (one of the few indie desktop ISVs) also writes an independent annual report. Their 2014 report talks about the Windows 8 start button and the economics of mobile apps. http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/ http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/
  - quickpost 12y ago
    Really cool, thanks for sharing!
- gadders 12y ago
  The writing was excellent, and hilarious. Seconded.
- rossk 12y ago
  I was just thinking about his anti-"audioblogging" manifesto the other day: http://www.idlewords.com/2004/08/an_audioblogging_manifesto.htm http://www.idlewords.com/2004/08/an_audioblogging_manifesto....
  - minimax 12y ago
    In case you are at the office or just want to get through it in less that four minutes: http://idlewords.com/audio-manifesto.txt http://idlewords.com/audio-manifesto.txt
    - apag 12y ago
      It’s simply not the full experience without sitting through it running on while the choir swells.
- shreeshga 12y ago
  Highly recommend following his twitter feed: https://twitter.com/Pinboard https://twitter.com/Pinboard Full of awesome sarcasm. /plug Also, I love Pinboard so much that I wrote an Android app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.shreesh.pin https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.shreesh.pin) which I plan to improve/fix.
sideproject 12y ago
Awesome. Always enjoy reading your thoughts on your Pinboard. But I was always curious on how to correctly pronounce your name. :)
- octref 12y ago
  http://idlewords.com/about.htm http://idlewords.com/about.htm My name is pronounced "MAH-tchay". It's an archaic Polish form of "Matthew".
- nulltype 12y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eky5uKILXtM#t=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eky5uKILXtM#t=10
- idlewords 12y ago
  http://idlewords.com/say_my_name.m4a http://idlewords.com/say_my_name.m4a
danso 12y ago
Was just about to go to bed but felt compelled to comment on this. Several years ago, or whenever Pinboard was a little less than $9, I signed up for it on a whim but kind of thought my coworker was crazy...except for content sites (i.e. Spotify and Netflix)...paying for an online service just seemed alien, and paying for a bookmarking service, a feature that has been functional in browsers for a long while...that seemed completely bonkers (I never got into delicio.us or its competitors). The only reason I can possibly think of for having joined was that my co-worker is much smarter and more efficient than I am. Today, Pinboard is to me the epitome of a life/work-enhancing product...I use it daily to capture HN links, it's incredibly unintrusive, and not once since I've been on it has it been down when I've needed to refer to my bookmarks. I keep forgetting that I've already paid a one-time fee for it, and if it decided to secretly charge me on a reoccurring basis, I probably wouldn't notice and might not even care. I don't think it's coincidence that my fondness of Pinboard correlates with how I've changed as a developer, becoming much less interested in do-it-all frameworks such as Rails, and aspiring to spend more time at the command line. I've had a much greater appreciation for simplicity, not because I'm particularly Zen, but because I don't want a service or a program or a framework to do everything for me. In the journalism/research world, people frequently discuss tips and advice on bookmarking apps. I keep pushing Pinboard.in but I don't think many people have been interested in it. Why would they pay for it when all it does is record bookmarks in plaintext, whereas Evernote saves so many different kinds of media, has an iPad app, and is free, even if it crashes once in awhile and can be unpredictable in how it saves content, etc. etc...but hey, it seems like a real product, right? I just shake my head. It took me a few years of pain to realize that even the slightest bit of friction prevents a tool from being used daily...and when your job depends on quick, efficient information retrieval, a non-daily tool is hazardous...but I only learned it through experience. So, Pinboard will always be a great product to me, but I'm not going to put much energy into evangelizing for it :)
- tree_of_item 12y ago
  "and paying for a bookmarking service, a feature that has been functional in browsers for a long while...that seemed completely bonkers" Can you explain why you now think Pinboard is better than the native bookmarking features in every browser?
sdevlin 12y ago
Pinboard is an awesome service. If you don't have an account, you should. It's especially refreshing for those (like me) who despise the Internet of JavaScript Bullshit. Pinboard is fast as hell because it doesn't waste your time with flashy nonsense. Second: Maciej is a great writer. If you're not reading his articles (http://www.idlewords.com/ http://www.idlewords.com/), you should be.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  This blog stole far too much of my time... it's fantastic. I didn't know he'd visited Australia, would have offered him a beer if he was down my way.
- jbish 12y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. Great writing, loved the latest post on the Yemen trip. I hadn't heard about qat (khat) and then stumbled upon it again this morning here http://modernfarmer.com/2014/07/everything-need-know-khat/ http://modernfarmer.com/2014/07/everything-need-know-khat/
- smellf 12y ago
  Yeah this guy is a really engaging writer. Just because this is HN, I have to call out his post on Paul Graham: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm It's from 2005 so a lot of the links are dead now, but I was able to dredge up the link to PG's painting: https://web.archive.org/web/20050409001349/http://store1.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_1837_63071 https://web.archive.org/web/20050409001349/http://store1.yim...
- goblin89 12y ago
  > If you don't have an account, you should. Just a word of caution for those ready to act on this right away: research before paying (unless the price is something you can afford to spend without thinking). After I impulse-bought a Pinboard account (about two years ago), I realized that not always can I save a bookmark immediately—for two reasons: 1) the extension for Google Chrome was buggy to the point of UI not showing up at times, and required logging in every now and then (the extension didn't see any change until I switched to Safari much later—perhaps it was fixed afterwards), and 2) although I use Pinboard somewhat episodically, I couldn't save a bookmark a few times because their servers were down. Even though Pinboard's UI is very clean, and I feel more confident knowing that I paid for the service, and I like privacy-by-default and clean UI, and I admire its founder, I wouldn't recommend it. The primary purpose of a bookmark manager, I realized, is to help you immediately free up your mind by storing an URL, and it trumps everything else.
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rabino 12y ago
Maciej, if you are reading this... can you implement some kind of optional recurring charge? I want to pay you at least every year. I feel I'm stealing from you. No, I don't want to pay for archives. It's not a service I find useful for me.
- simonw 12y ago
  If you want an optional yearly recurring charge, why not pay for the archiving feature and think if it as a $25/year donation?
  - idlewords 12y ago
    Yeah, exactly, just upgrade. And thanks for the kind words!
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  Just pay for the archives. It's not expensive, doesn't require more effort on his part, and although it's not something I find myself using very often, it's super helpful when I need it. I've got pinboard bookmarks going back to 2005; link rot is a problem on the older ones that pinboard's archive occasionally solves.
  - archagon 12y ago
    For sure. It's like your own personal archive.org.
fisher-lebo 12y ago
Why did social bookmarking die? I say this in the sense that obviously Pinboard shows it is still around, but the hype and velocity that was in the space a few years back is gone. Hacker News, Reddit, and bookmarks in your browser don't do the same thing. The former two because links you submit to them are not considered "yours" in the same way del.icio.us and Pinboard, and browser bookmarks because they are not social in the same way. I guess Twitter does the same thing for a lot of people but it isn't as focused and it doesn't feel the same to me. Does anyone else have any thoughts? Is social bookmarking forever relegated to a niche market or...?
- vegashacker 12y ago
  Pinterest is social bookmarking and is (obviously) incredibly popular. Delicious pushed "tags" as its killer feature. But if it had dumped putting tags front and center, and instead focused on beautiful photos of the items bookmarked, maybe it would have taken off more.
  - firebones 12y ago
    I've already up voted you, but have to praise this insight. Folksonomy is a wonderful navigation and subscription method for the early adopters, but I still hear my wife telling my son to "search for a recipe you like on Pinterest". It's perhaps the Yahoo! vs. Google aesthetic in the sense that Delicious appealed to curators who were comfortable navigating by concepts, while the rest of the world just wants to find a like-minded, curated world that they can navigate by search.
  - joshu 12y ago
    I don't think tags were front and center. We wanted to do images; the delicious predecessor did have inage capture.
- firebones 12y ago
  I don't think it died as much as it captured the early adopters, which by definition represent a limited market. In my case, it's a great tool for archiving research. I'd describe social bookmarking as aspirational in the sense that a lot of what I bookmark is for future projects around current and latent interests, which I know some day that I'll return to. That's maybe a use case for the creative class, and not something as passive as reddit browsing. Take Shirky's power law distribution ideas around content on the internet. A small percentage produce, another percentage participate and by far the largest percentage consume. Social bookmarking is a kind of curation that is in between the producing/participating levels. Much of the social aspect has been gutted by Twitter (which wins in terms of sharing, but drops the folksonomy and organization and production of a research repository), but what Twitter drops affects almost no one outside the 1-5% who are in that produce/participate space.
clarky07 12y ago
I love reading about pinboard and it's success. it's the epitome of a business that does something small that solves a pain point and does it well. Now, it's not a huge pain point, so it's never going to be a billion dollar business (i don't think) but it shows that people will indeed still pay for software when you make their lives a little bit better.
tptacek 12y ago
Pinboard is so great. I've bookmarked dozens and dozens of PDF crypto papers, and Pinboard does full-text search across them (and everything else I've bookmarked); I can type "pin subgroup" in my browser bar and poof! I have the paper I was trying to remember that breaks down the known attacks on GCM. To me, it's not "bookmarking" so much as "personal search". Also, I would pay 2x if it generated more published back-and-forth with the current owners of Delicious.
- patio11 12y ago
  Thomas is alluding to Maciej's frequent updates on Twitter, such as: Yesterday the new Delicious owner asked me about “helping guide the product and vision” for the site. My vision is this: I crush them https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/464744912433729536 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/464744912433729536
  - steveklabnik 12y ago
    I actually got a Pinboard account because I love his tweets so damn much.
- rikkus 12y ago
  What do you use to get the 'pin' feature in your browser bar?
  - jarek 12y ago
    I'd guess a basic custom search defined to go to https://pinboard.in/search/u:[username]?query=%s https://pinboard.in/search/u:[username]?query=%s
    - rikkus 12y ago
      Ah yes, I'd forgotten such a thing even existed. Added, thanks!
    - jaf656s 12y ago
      Don't forget &fulltext=on if you want full text searching as tptacek described.
waiterZen 12y ago
It's awesome
kimonos 12y ago
Cool! Keep it up!
mzehrer 12y ago
Maciej's post "Don't be a free user" [https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/] is still one of my favourites. The whole concept of doing something that is "just big enough" in ways of financial success and scaling is so liberating. You will end up doing something sustainable instead of constantly worrying about the outcome of your "startup" adventure. I even adopted the one-time payment business model for my own service [crofflr.com] which is so refreshingly anti-business, you will meet users that activley complain that they can't pay you more. And after meeting Maciej in real life (hope to see you again here in Berlin) and learning how much he cares about Pinboard and it's users, I'm totally convinced that this is the right way to do business and that it's okay to ignore all the flashy Yo, Snapchat and Pinterest crap out there. I really like the idea of Mom&Pop businesses on the internet.
- MattBearman 12y ago
  The end of that post is beautiful: DISCLAIMER: I run a paid bookmarking site. Every morning I wake up and dive into my vault of golden coins.
wowtip 12y ago
I really like the idea and the philosophy behind this site. What bothers me and keeps me from using it is the fact that it seems to be a one man show. I could really use this, but my bookmarks have too much time invested to be put on a service I cannot trust completely to stay around. What would happen to the bookmark collection if main dev is hit by a bus (heaven forbid) or just lose interest? Could not find anything on this in FAQ. TOS mentions "If the site ceases operation, you will receive an opportunity to download your stored data in a format suitable for import into other bookmarking services." But the concept seems well thought out, can a current user confirm my worries are unfounded?
- david_shaw 12y ago
  Well, first off, being a larger operation certainly doesn't prevent shutdown. Although it may add some peace of mind, there's a risk in trusting any third-party service provider. Secondly, you can easily make use of the API to backup your bookmarks [1]. A simple cronjob can make a daily repo of everything, just in case. I've been using Pinboard for about two years now, and I love it. It's simple, easy to use, and does what I want--and nothing more. 1: https://pinboard.in/api/ https://pinboard.in/api/
  - drifkin 12y ago
    Exactly, Pinboard has a pretty good API, so you can handle the backups yourself without too much trouble. I came across a post [1] with a backup script. It refers to another link [2] that shows you can just use a simple curl and get all of your data. [1] http://alexwlchan.net/2013/03/pinboard-backups/ http://alexwlchan.net/2013/03/pinboard-backups/ [2] http://supersoju.com/blog/2013/04/01/pinboard-backups-in-1-line/ http://supersoju.com/blog/2013/04/01/pinboard-backups-in-1-l...
    - wowtip 12y ago
      Thanks guys, that makes sense. The 1 line curl backup looks nifty. Going to look into this a bit more. Should improve on my current local bookmarks + external backup setup, without involving Google or any other data mining cloud service.
yuhong 12y ago
OT, but nowadays delicious is owned by Science Inc. I wonder how well it is doing comparing to the AVOS days.
Numberwang 12y ago
I just signed up based on the positive feedback from this post. I must say I really like it. Would love for him to include a title suggestion feature similar to the one on Reddit, but other than that the site is more or less perfect.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  I have been using pinboard for years. It's the only service that immediately comes to mind that I appreciate more every year. I think part of that is because, "On the design level, it means not futzing with stuff unnecessarily, except for bug fixes and basic improvements." So much of my job involves dealing with the fallout of technological churn; pinboard is my calm oasis by comparison.
  - Numberwang 12y ago
    This is inspiring. Out of curiosity, do you use/how do you work with the note function?
    - thaumaturgy 12y ago
      Huh. Embarrassingly, I didn't even know it existed. I played with it for a moment and I don't know. I've already got a system for saving bits of text and notes and things that works for me -- pinboard might not be better than that.
- weiran 12y ago
  Try this bookmarklet: https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard
consta 12y ago
The blog post states that Pinboard makes around $200k a year but they charge only a one-time fee of $10. Does that mean they get 20k signups each year? Does Pinboard display ads or is there another business model behind it?
- opafritz 12y ago
  No ads. You have the option of archiving all your bookmarks for $25/year. https://pinboard.in/tour/#archive https://pinboard.in/tour/#archive
- jcrites 12y ago
  Pinboard supports archiving and text searching the content of your links for $25 per year.
  - rikkus 12y ago
    I didn't even know this, and I 'bought' it really early on. Thanks for letting me know - I've now signed up for the extra service!
kmfrk 12y ago
Speaking of, it looks like pg or whoever finally unbanned Maciej from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  He was unbanned a long time ago; he only recently decided to come back to HN, which I wasn't aware of. Fortunate for us. edit: Looks like he might've only shown up because someone lifted data from his bedbug site. If we're lucky, he'll stick around, but I'd be (pleasantly) surprised.
- Kiro 12y ago
  Why was he banned?
  - tptacek 12y ago
    He called 'lionhearted a "prolix douchebag".
    - idlewords 12y ago
      I regret nothing
- tptacek 12y ago
  Maciej was banned for like 5 minutes, literally. But he was justifiably irritated by the experience, and left by choice.
- idlewords 12y ago
  I was hellbanned for a few days, then tptacek interceded and got me unbanned. Paul Graham was kind of squirrely about it, so I thought it was a good time to leave. I have met the new HN management and have no beef with the site. I only avoid it now because it's a big potential time sink.
  - 12y ago
john2x 12y ago
Love pinboard and love the pricing scheme. I wonder how much work goes into maintaining the site? I'm guessing this is his full-time job?
oskarth 12y ago
I really like Pinboard, and I used to use it a lot but for some reason I stopped. I'd like to start using it again. There's a big elephant in my library though: thousands of chrome bookmarks, uncategorized ("I like this!" ctrl-D). Is it possible to import all my Chrome bookmarks and have them auto-tagged based on popular tags? Even if full coverage isn't possible, partial would be great. For example, I have hundreds of books bookmarked, all of them on Amazon (books). Similar with imdb (movies), .pdfs (papers), youtube (videos), etc.
- a3n 12y ago
  https://pinboard.in/howto/#import https://pinboard.in/howto/#import There is an import feature (and an export feature). Basically export your browser's bookmarks to html, however that works. Then import that file to pinboard. I'm pretty sure I did that, two years ago. I don't remember if tags survive the process from browser to pinboard.
- TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
  This write up[1] really helped me see the value in Pinboard, and I just decided to jump right into it. I've been much happier using it over Firefox built-in bookmarking tool, and find it 300x better than relying on Evernote. Even with the webclipper getting to and finding clipped items in Evernote was a painfully slow process. On my desktop I have this[2] Alfred.app workflow installed which makes getting to the bookmarks even easier, and faster, than clicking on in the bar. 1. http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/ http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/ 2. http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-version-222-updated/?hl=pinboard http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-versio...
bravura 12y ago
I love pinboard. Can I make a feature suggestion? (Is maciej active on HN these days?) I'm sick of giving things tags. I imagine some users like to tag things and some, like me, don't want to. Can you create an autotag mode? You can mix a) predictions based upon the body text, and b) manual tags from users not in lazy mode. You could allow users to drop bad autotags for a particular URL.
- ansimionescu 12y ago
  That's one of the essential features of a product idea I've had for quite some time. Freaky
- a3n 12y ago
  The firefox addon does something very close to this. When you save a bookmark, a window pops up, with all the necessaries, and a text field for notes, and a tag field that you can type in. There are usually suggested tags below that, which you can use by clicking them; I think the suggestions come partly from tags you already have, and partly from the target content. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard-extension/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard-exte...
  - jarek 12y ago
    The suggested tags also appear when you use the popup bookmarklet from https://pinboard.in/howto/ https://pinboard.in/howto/
    - bravura 12y ago
      I have used both of those. At the bare minimum, I want them to automatically use the suggested tags, so I can bookmark things with a single click.
- triangleman 12y ago
  This! Or just list the suggested tags in order of popularity. Right now I am just getting suggested tags solely from within the pool of my existing tags. I want to see what other people tagged.
bambax 12y ago
> the site makes roughly the same amount of money (around $200K) every year Where does the money come from? Between 2013 and 2014 the site apparently gained just 1K customers, and only new customers pay (around $10) so that would mean $10k of revenue from new users. I understand there's an option to pay more to "archive" stuff, but does that bring an additional $190k of revenue?? (Disclaimer: I'm a happy user of Pinboard. I don't "love" it but I use it regularly).
- opafritz 12y ago
  The site has 24k active users. Do you think it's impossible that 7.6k of them have the archive option of $25/year enabled? I have no reason to doubt this, archive feature is great and supports the service.
  - bambax 12y ago
    A third is a lot, yes, but not impossible, no.
    - opafritz 12y ago
      I would say that people who sign up for Pinboard (+ pay ~$10) are much more likely to support a service that they like and rely on. Otherwise they would've chosen a free service like Diigo or Delicious to begin with. English is not my first language, so I'm not sure. Does "makes $200K every year" mean net profit or just the income from which hosting still has to be subtracted from? If it's the latter, that means a lot more people are paying for archive.
      - barsky 12y ago
        I remember Maciej saying he collocates his servers, which works out to be remarkably cheap in the long run. I'd assume the server costs are actually pretty small, relative to the income of the site.
        12y ago
PeterGriffin 12y ago
A bit of a lost opportunity, because I've barely heard about Pinboard, and the fact of them celebrating the passage of time since they were found, is extremely trivial. BTW, MySpace recently turned eleven. When writing posts and news, typically you want the headline to focus on a new feature, a new app, or if it'll be a number, focus on a meaningful number, like number of users, something that could engage those who aren't engaged right now. Way it is, a birthday party of some company I know little about is someone else's party, and I won't even open the article.
- lemming 12y ago
  That's your loss, in this case.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- rfrey 12y ago
  a birthday party of some company I know little about is someone else's party Most of the value I get from HN, and social websites in general, is from people surfacing things I didn't know about.
  - PeterGriffin 12y ago
    You have totally missed the point of my post, and I guess most of those that modded it. EDIT: Ok this is starting to get a little weird. What's with the comical negative overreaction to my posts. What exactly did I say to warrant that?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - jarek 12y ago
      > What exactly did I say to warrant that? Ironically, you have missed the point of the blog post. It wasn't written to market the service, nor to engage those who aren't engaged right now. Your comment sounds like it was written by a marketoid or a growth hacker.
fmavituna 12y ago
What's the best way to use pinboard? Do you use bookmarklet or an extension? I tried the extension and the bookmarklet on their website but both have really sub-part experience in many levels. Are there any alternative and better ways to utilize pinboard?
- seriocomic 12y ago
  That's the great thing - it doesn't force you into any particular 'way'. Me personally - I use pinboard to 'bookmark' things I want to buy, I use Pocket for things I want to read, and I used Feedly for the river. How you mix that up is, and should be, up to you...
  - fmavituna 12y ago
    I like the way you look at the things, very positive. The way I see, its experience is rubbish I can't even use it effectively :) All I want is to bookmark stuff and then go back and find them. Isn't that supposed to be core feature of a bookmarking website, what's it good for if the flow for that is simply bad, unpolished?
- TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
  Alfred.app workflow for accessing my bookmarks: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-version-222-updated/?hl=pinboard http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-versio... A better bookmarklet: https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard Good guide to getting started: http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/ http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/
edsu 12y ago
How about we put a human face on pinboard users and tweet our stats (# of bookmarks, total storage, url) from our profile pages using the #pinboard5 tag? So for example something like: https://twitter.com/edsu/status/487193412631003137 https://twitter.com/edsu/status/487193412631003137
- mcherm 12y ago
  Sure! I've got 11,481 bookmarks, nearly all (except those tagged "personal_net") with descriptive notes. It's a wonderful service. And yes, I'm a paying customer. Not so much because I need the full-text search, but because I want the site to be profitable. (https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/)
trendyy 12y ago
When I first read Maciej's tweets and blogs early on I thought he was a cynical arsehole. As time went on I realised the tech industry could use a few more cynical arseholes.
a3n 12y ago
Huzzah!
mcherm 12y ago
> So the biggest risk in a project like this remains burnout. Actually, my biggest concern is a continuity plan. What happens to Pinboard (and my data) if Maciej gets "hit by a bus"?
- tptacek 12y ago
  A consortium of silent investors takes the site public. Also: parallax effects on the front page.
- idlewords 12y ago
  I would worry more about trips to Yemen, personally.
  - kryptiskt 12y ago
    I'm sure that the armed escort comes courtesy of Pinboard users in the Yemeni government.
- tnorthcutt 12y ago
  https://pinboard.in/export/ https://pinboard.in/export/
joelcarranza 12y ago
Shameless plug: my pinboard iOS app Pinswift is on sale today for a dollar (down from 5) to celebrate Pinboard's birthday. If you are a Pinboard fan, or are just getting started, please consider trying out the app. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinswift-fast-powerful-pinboard/id766741240?ls=1&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinswift-fast-powerful-pinbo...
- ehurrell 12y ago
  I just signed up to Pinboard and got your app to help use it on iOS. Initial impressions are good, I like it a lot, but if I could make one feature request I would love to have another way to add bookmarks. If there was a big plus button I could hit in the top left that brought up the 'add bookmark' screen it'd be helpful. I already accidentally dismissed the 'do you want to add the clipboard's link', and I frequently copy full tweets with links I'd like to save (as link + description), (EDIT: these don't trigger the 'link in buffer' prompt). This might also be helpful for pinboard's linkless notes? Anyway, thanks for the great app :)
zetx 12y ago
Pinboard is indeed wonderful. What I find lacking is a replacement for the old Delicious Firefox extension which included a way to use [Delicious] bookmarked custom searches in the browser.
vardhanw 12y ago
I use diigo with almost all the benefits I could gather for pinboard from this thread - tagging, annotation, cloudsync, light, extensions, read later etc. And it is free. Am I missing something? I have thousands of bookmarks, searchable, easy access, one click bookmarking, etc. Is there an advantage to switch?
joereggan190 12y ago
Watch Germany vs Argentina Live http://campmediterraneo.com/en/node/36568 http://campmediterraneo.com/en/node/36568

491 points by thisisblurry 12y ago

Great essay and reflection, full of some funny nuggets: "My strategy of pre-emptively antagonizing anyone who might possibly have an interest in acquiring or funding the site has worked wonderfully." "I enjoy the looking-glass aspect of our industry, where running a mildly profitable small business makes me a crazy maverick not afraid to break all the rules."

firebones 12y ago

I love Maciej's writing. His recent post on idlewords.com about his trip to Yemen was great, and his annual reports on Pinboard are up there with Buffett in terms of eloquence and wry humor that just skirts the edges of being laconic. I also love Pinboard, as well as joshu's original del.icio.us, and all services that find that completely narrow utility that I like to call "stripped and liberated". Stripped in the sense that they seek to do one thing well, on the face of humanity, forever. Liberated in the sense that they are liberated from the need to be beholden to investors or broader corporate strategies which shred their utility and focus in service of some other imperative. Has the day of the "stripped and liberated" service come and gone? Or are there still opportunities waiting to be discovered?

initself 12y ago
I don't know but I thank you for coming up with just the right phrase to describe this aesthetic! May stripped and liberated computing never die!
- e12e 12y ago
  I don't know, "liberated" associates strongly with "liberty" for me -- as in the software freedoms, and the users right/opportunity to self-host, like email. I think "stripped and independent" better conveys what op means. I suppose in the tradition of "indy" that should be shortened to "strindy" or something. Or perhaps just "an indy service" (stripped aesthetic implied by virtue of being "indy").
walterbell 12y ago
Stardock (one of the few indie desktop ISVs) also writes an independent annual report. Their 2014 report talks about the Windows 8 start button and the economics of mobile apps. http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/ http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/
- quickpost 12y ago
  Really cool, thanks for sharing!
gadders 12y ago
The writing was excellent, and hilarious. Seconded.
rossk 12y ago
I was just thinking about his anti-"audioblogging" manifesto the other day: http://www.idlewords.com/2004/08/an_audioblogging_manifesto.htm http://www.idlewords.com/2004/08/an_audioblogging_manifesto....
- minimax 12y ago
  In case you are at the office or just want to get through it in less that four minutes: http://idlewords.com/audio-manifesto.txt http://idlewords.com/audio-manifesto.txt
  - apag 12y ago
    It’s simply not the full experience without sitting through it running on while the choir swells.
shreeshga 12y ago
Highly recommend following his twitter feed: https://twitter.com/Pinboard https://twitter.com/Pinboard Full of awesome sarcasm. /plug Also, I love Pinboard so much that I wrote an Android app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.shreesh.pin https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.shreesh.pin) which I plan to improve/fix.

sideproject 12y ago

Awesome. Always enjoy reading your thoughts on your Pinboard. But I was always curious on how to correctly pronounce your name. :)

octref 12y ago
http://idlewords.com/about.htm http://idlewords.com/about.htm My name is pronounced "MAH-tchay". It's an archaic Polish form of "Matthew".
nulltype 12y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eky5uKILXtM#t=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eky5uKILXtM#t=10
idlewords 12y ago
http://idlewords.com/say_my_name.m4a http://idlewords.com/say_my_name.m4a

danso 12y ago

Was just about to go to bed but felt compelled to comment on this. Several years ago, or whenever Pinboard was a little less than $9, I signed up for it on a whim but kind of thought my coworker was crazy...except for content sites (i.e. Spotify and Netflix)...paying for an online service just seemed alien, and paying for a bookmarking service, a feature that has been functional in browsers for a long while...that seemed completely bonkers (I never got into delicio.us or its competitors). The only reason I can possibly think of for having joined was that my co-worker is much smarter and more efficient than I am. Today, Pinboard is to me the epitome of a life/work-enhancing product...I use it daily to capture HN links, it's incredibly unintrusive, and not once since I've been on it has it been down when I've needed to refer to my bookmarks. I keep forgetting that I've already paid a one-time fee for it, and if it decided to secretly charge me on a reoccurring basis, I probably wouldn't notice and might not even care. I don't think it's coincidence that my fondness of Pinboard correlates with how I've changed as a developer, becoming much less interested in do-it-all frameworks such as Rails, and aspiring to spend more time at the command line. I've had a much greater appreciation for simplicity, not because I'm particularly Zen, but because I don't want a service or a program or a framework to do everything for me. In the journalism/research world, people frequently discuss tips and advice on bookmarking apps. I keep pushing Pinboard.in but I don't think many people have been interested in it. Why would they pay for it when all it does is record bookmarks in plaintext, whereas Evernote saves so many different kinds of media, has an iPad app, and is free, even if it crashes once in awhile and can be unpredictable in how it saves content, etc. etc...but hey, it seems like a real product, right? I just shake my head. It took me a few years of pain to realize that even the slightest bit of friction prevents a tool from being used daily...and when your job depends on quick, efficient information retrieval, a non-daily tool is hazardous...but I only learned it through experience. So, Pinboard will always be a great product to me, but I'm not going to put much energy into evangelizing for it :)

tree_of_item 12y ago
"and paying for a bookmarking service, a feature that has been functional in browsers for a long while...that seemed completely bonkers" Can you explain why you now think Pinboard is better than the native bookmarking features in every browser?

sdevlin 12y ago

Pinboard is an awesome service. If you don't have an account, you should. It's especially refreshing for those (like me) who despise the Internet of JavaScript Bullshit. Pinboard is fast as hell because it doesn't waste your time with flashy nonsense. Second: Maciej is a great writer. If you're not reading his articles (http://www.idlewords.com/ http://www.idlewords.com/), you should be.

voltagex_ 12y ago
This blog stole far too much of my time... it's fantastic. I didn't know he'd visited Australia, would have offered him a beer if he was down my way.
jbish 12y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. Great writing, loved the latest post on the Yemen trip. I hadn't heard about qat (khat) and then stumbled upon it again this morning here http://modernfarmer.com/2014/07/everything-need-know-khat/ http://modernfarmer.com/2014/07/everything-need-know-khat/
smellf 12y ago
Yeah this guy is a really engaging writer. Just because this is HN, I have to call out his post on Paul Graham: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm It's from 2005 so a lot of the links are dead now, but I was able to dredge up the link to PG's painting: https://web.archive.org/web/20050409001349/http://store1.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_1837_63071 https://web.archive.org/web/20050409001349/http://store1.yim...
goblin89 12y ago
> If you don't have an account, you should. Just a word of caution for those ready to act on this right away: research before paying (unless the price is something you can afford to spend without thinking). After I impulse-bought a Pinboard account (about two years ago), I realized that not always can I save a bookmark immediately—for two reasons: 1) the extension for Google Chrome was buggy to the point of UI not showing up at times, and required logging in every now and then (the extension didn't see any change until I switched to Safari much later—perhaps it was fixed afterwards), and 2) although I use Pinboard somewhat episodically, I couldn't save a bookmark a few times because their servers were down. Even though Pinboard's UI is very clean, and I feel more confident knowing that I paid for the service, and I like privacy-by-default and clean UI, and I admire its founder, I wouldn't recommend it. The primary purpose of a bookmark manager, I realized, is to help you immediately free up your mind by storing an URL, and it trumps everything else.

deleted 12y ago

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rabino 12y ago

Maciej, if you are reading this... can you implement some kind of optional recurring charge? I want to pay you at least every year. I feel I'm stealing from you. No, I don't want to pay for archives. It's not a service I find useful for me.

simonw 12y ago
If you want an optional yearly recurring charge, why not pay for the archiving feature and think if it as a $25/year donation?
- idlewords 12y ago
  Yeah, exactly, just upgrade. And thanks for the kind words!
thaumaturgy 12y ago
Just pay for the archives. It's not expensive, doesn't require more effort on his part, and although it's not something I find myself using very often, it's super helpful when I need it. I've got pinboard bookmarks going back to 2005; link rot is a problem on the older ones that pinboard's archive occasionally solves.
- archagon 12y ago
  For sure. It's like your own personal archive.org.

fisher-lebo 12y ago

Why did social bookmarking die? I say this in the sense that obviously Pinboard shows it is still around, but the hype and velocity that was in the space a few years back is gone. Hacker News, Reddit, and bookmarks in your browser don't do the same thing. The former two because links you submit to them are not considered "yours" in the same way del.icio.us and Pinboard, and browser bookmarks because they are not social in the same way. I guess Twitter does the same thing for a lot of people but it isn't as focused and it doesn't feel the same to me. Does anyone else have any thoughts? Is social bookmarking forever relegated to a niche market or...?

vegashacker 12y ago
Pinterest is social bookmarking and is (obviously) incredibly popular. Delicious pushed "tags" as its killer feature. But if it had dumped putting tags front and center, and instead focused on beautiful photos of the items bookmarked, maybe it would have taken off more.
- firebones 12y ago
  I've already up voted you, but have to praise this insight. Folksonomy is a wonderful navigation and subscription method for the early adopters, but I still hear my wife telling my son to "search for a recipe you like on Pinterest". It's perhaps the Yahoo! vs. Google aesthetic in the sense that Delicious appealed to curators who were comfortable navigating by concepts, while the rest of the world just wants to find a like-minded, curated world that they can navigate by search.
- joshu 12y ago
  I don't think tags were front and center. We wanted to do images; the delicious predecessor did have inage capture.
firebones 12y ago
I don't think it died as much as it captured the early adopters, which by definition represent a limited market. In my case, it's a great tool for archiving research. I'd describe social bookmarking as aspirational in the sense that a lot of what I bookmark is for future projects around current and latent interests, which I know some day that I'll return to. That's maybe a use case for the creative class, and not something as passive as reddit browsing. Take Shirky's power law distribution ideas around content on the internet. A small percentage produce, another percentage participate and by far the largest percentage consume. Social bookmarking is a kind of curation that is in between the producing/participating levels. Much of the social aspect has been gutted by Twitter (which wins in terms of sharing, but drops the folksonomy and organization and production of a research repository), but what Twitter drops affects almost no one outside the 1-5% who are in that produce/participate space.

clarky07 12y ago

I love reading about pinboard and it's success. it's the epitome of a business that does something small that solves a pain point and does it well. Now, it's not a huge pain point, so it's never going to be a billion dollar business (i don't think) but it shows that people will indeed still pay for software when you make their lives a little bit better.

tptacek 12y ago

Pinboard is so great. I've bookmarked dozens and dozens of PDF crypto papers, and Pinboard does full-text search across them (and everything else I've bookmarked); I can type "pin subgroup" in my browser bar and poof! I have the paper I was trying to remember that breaks down the known attacks on GCM. To me, it's not "bookmarking" so much as "personal search". Also, I would pay 2x if it generated more published back-and-forth with the current owners of Delicious.

patio11 12y ago
Thomas is alluding to Maciej's frequent updates on Twitter, such as: Yesterday the new Delicious owner asked me about “helping guide the product and vision” for the site. My vision is this: I crush them https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/464744912433729536 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/464744912433729536
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  I actually got a Pinboard account because I love his tweets so damn much.
rikkus 12y ago
What do you use to get the 'pin' feature in your browser bar?
- jarek 12y ago
  I'd guess a basic custom search defined to go to https://pinboard.in/search/u:[username]?query=%s https://pinboard.in/search/u:[username]?query=%s
  - rikkus 12y ago
    Ah yes, I'd forgotten such a thing even existed. Added, thanks!
  - jaf656s 12y ago
    Don't forget &fulltext=on if you want full text searching as tptacek described.

waiterZen 12y ago

It's awesome

kimonos 12y ago

Cool! Keep it up!

mzehrer 12y ago

Maciej's post "Don't be a free user" [https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/] is still one of my favourites. The whole concept of doing something that is "just big enough" in ways of financial success and scaling is so liberating. You will end up doing something sustainable instead of constantly worrying about the outcome of your "startup" adventure. I even adopted the one-time payment business model for my own service [crofflr.com] which is so refreshingly anti-business, you will meet users that activley complain that they can't pay you more. And after meeting Maciej in real life (hope to see you again here in Berlin) and learning how much he cares about Pinboard and it's users, I'm totally convinced that this is the right way to do business and that it's okay to ignore all the flashy Yo, Snapchat and Pinterest crap out there. I really like the idea of Mom&Pop businesses on the internet.

MattBearman 12y ago
The end of that post is beautiful: DISCLAIMER: I run a paid bookmarking site. Every morning I wake up and dive into my vault of golden coins.

wowtip 12y ago

I really like the idea and the philosophy behind this site. What bothers me and keeps me from using it is the fact that it seems to be a one man show. I could really use this, but my bookmarks have too much time invested to be put on a service I cannot trust completely to stay around. What would happen to the bookmark collection if main dev is hit by a bus (heaven forbid) or just lose interest? Could not find anything on this in FAQ. TOS mentions "If the site ceases operation, you will receive an opportunity to download your stored data in a format suitable for import into other bookmarking services." But the concept seems well thought out, can a current user confirm my worries are unfounded?

david_shaw 12y ago
Well, first off, being a larger operation certainly doesn't prevent shutdown. Although it may add some peace of mind, there's a risk in trusting any third-party service provider. Secondly, you can easily make use of the API to backup your bookmarks [1]. A simple cronjob can make a daily repo of everything, just in case. I've been using Pinboard for about two years now, and I love it. It's simple, easy to use, and does what I want--and nothing more. 1: https://pinboard.in/api/ https://pinboard.in/api/
- drifkin 12y ago
  Exactly, Pinboard has a pretty good API, so you can handle the backups yourself without too much trouble. I came across a post [1] with a backup script. It refers to another link [2] that shows you can just use a simple curl and get all of your data. [1] http://alexwlchan.net/2013/03/pinboard-backups/ http://alexwlchan.net/2013/03/pinboard-backups/ [2] http://supersoju.com/blog/2013/04/01/pinboard-backups-in-1-line/ http://supersoju.com/blog/2013/04/01/pinboard-backups-in-1-l...
  - wowtip 12y ago
    Thanks guys, that makes sense. The 1 line curl backup looks nifty. Going to look into this a bit more. Should improve on my current local bookmarks + external backup setup, without involving Google or any other data mining cloud service.

yuhong 12y ago

OT, but nowadays delicious is owned by Science Inc. I wonder how well it is doing comparing to the AVOS days.

Numberwang 12y ago

I just signed up based on the positive feedback from this post. I must say I really like it. Would love for him to include a title suggestion feature similar to the one on Reddit, but other than that the site is more or less perfect.

thaumaturgy 12y ago
I have been using pinboard for years. It's the only service that immediately comes to mind that I appreciate more every year. I think part of that is because, "On the design level, it means not futzing with stuff unnecessarily, except for bug fixes and basic improvements." So much of my job involves dealing with the fallout of technological churn; pinboard is my calm oasis by comparison.
- Numberwang 12y ago
  This is inspiring. Out of curiosity, do you use/how do you work with the note function?
  - thaumaturgy 12y ago
    Huh. Embarrassingly, I didn't even know it existed. I played with it for a moment and I don't know. I've already got a system for saving bits of text and notes and things that works for me -- pinboard might not be better than that.
weiran 12y ago
Try this bookmarklet: https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard

consta 12y ago

The blog post states that Pinboard makes around $200k a year but they charge only a one-time fee of $10. Does that mean they get 20k signups each year? Does Pinboard display ads or is there another business model behind it?

opafritz 12y ago
No ads. You have the option of archiving all your bookmarks for $25/year. https://pinboard.in/tour/#archive https://pinboard.in/tour/#archive
jcrites 12y ago
Pinboard supports archiving and text searching the content of your links for $25 per year.
- rikkus 12y ago
  I didn't even know this, and I 'bought' it really early on. Thanks for letting me know - I've now signed up for the extra service!

kmfrk 12y ago

Speaking of, it looks like pg or whoever finally unbanned Maciej from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords.

thaumaturgy 12y ago
He was unbanned a long time ago; he only recently decided to come back to HN, which I wasn't aware of. Fortunate for us. edit: Looks like he might've only shown up because someone lifted data from his bedbug site. If we're lucky, he'll stick around, but I'd be (pleasantly) surprised.
Kiro 12y ago
Why was he banned?
- tptacek 12y ago
  He called 'lionhearted a "prolix douchebag".
  - idlewords 12y ago
    I regret nothing
tptacek 12y ago
Maciej was banned for like 5 minutes, literally. But he was justifiably irritated by the experience, and left by choice.
idlewords 12y ago
I was hellbanned for a few days, then tptacek interceded and got me unbanned. Paul Graham was kind of squirrely about it, so I thought it was a good time to leave. I have met the new HN management and have no beef with the site. I only avoid it now because it's a big potential time sink.
- 12y ago

john2x 12y ago

Love pinboard and love the pricing scheme. I wonder how much work goes into maintaining the site? I'm guessing this is his full-time job?

oskarth 12y ago

I really like Pinboard, and I used to use it a lot but for some reason I stopped. I'd like to start using it again. There's a big elephant in my library though: thousands of chrome bookmarks, uncategorized ("I like this!" ctrl-D). Is it possible to import all my Chrome bookmarks and have them auto-tagged based on popular tags? Even if full coverage isn't possible, partial would be great. For example, I have hundreds of books bookmarked, all of them on Amazon (books). Similar with imdb (movies), .pdfs (papers), youtube (videos), etc.

a3n 12y ago
https://pinboard.in/howto/#import https://pinboard.in/howto/#import There is an import feature (and an export feature). Basically export your browser's bookmarks to html, however that works. Then import that file to pinboard. I'm pretty sure I did that, two years ago. I don't remember if tags survive the process from browser to pinboard.
TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
This write up[1] really helped me see the value in Pinboard, and I just decided to jump right into it. I've been much happier using it over Firefox built-in bookmarking tool, and find it 300x better than relying on Evernote. Even with the webclipper getting to and finding clipped items in Evernote was a painfully slow process. On my desktop I have this[2] Alfred.app workflow installed which makes getting to the bookmarks even easier, and faster, than clicking on in the bar. 1. http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/ http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/ 2. http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-version-222-updated/?hl=pinboard http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-versio...

bravura 12y ago

I love pinboard. Can I make a feature suggestion? (Is maciej active on HN these days?) I'm sick of giving things tags. I imagine some users like to tag things and some, like me, don't want to. Can you create an autotag mode? You can mix a) predictions based upon the body text, and b) manual tags from users not in lazy mode. You could allow users to drop bad autotags for a particular URL.

ansimionescu 12y ago
That's one of the essential features of a product idea I've had for quite some time. Freaky
a3n 12y ago
The firefox addon does something very close to this. When you save a bookmark, a window pops up, with all the necessaries, and a text field for notes, and a tag field that you can type in. There are usually suggested tags below that, which you can use by clicking them; I think the suggestions come partly from tags you already have, and partly from the target content. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard-extension/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard-exte...
- jarek 12y ago
  The suggested tags also appear when you use the popup bookmarklet from https://pinboard.in/howto/ https://pinboard.in/howto/
  - bravura 12y ago
    I have used both of those. At the bare minimum, I want them to automatically use the suggested tags, so I can bookmark things with a single click.
triangleman 12y ago
This! Or just list the suggested tags in order of popularity. Right now I am just getting suggested tags solely from within the pool of my existing tags. I want to see what other people tagged.

bambax 12y ago

> the site makes roughly the same amount of money (around $200K) every year Where does the money come from? Between 2013 and 2014 the site apparently gained just 1K customers, and only new customers pay (around $10) so that would mean $10k of revenue from new users. I understand there's an option to pay more to "archive" stuff, but does that bring an additional $190k of revenue?? (Disclaimer: I'm a happy user of Pinboard. I don't "love" it but I use it regularly).

opafritz 12y ago
The site has 24k active users. Do you think it's impossible that 7.6k of them have the archive option of $25/year enabled? I have no reason to doubt this, archive feature is great and supports the service.
- bambax 12y ago
  A third is a lot, yes, but not impossible, no.
  - opafritz 12y ago
    I would say that people who sign up for Pinboard (+ pay ~$10) are much more likely to support a service that they like and rely on. Otherwise they would've chosen a free service like Diigo or Delicious to begin with. English is not my first language, so I'm not sure. Does "makes $200K every year" mean net profit or just the income from which hosting still has to be subtracted from? If it's the latter, that means a lot more people are paying for archive.
    - barsky 12y ago
      I remember Maciej saying he collocates his servers, which works out to be remarkably cheap in the long run. I'd assume the server costs are actually pretty small, relative to the income of the site.
      - 12y ago

PeterGriffin 12y ago

A bit of a lost opportunity, because I've barely heard about Pinboard, and the fact of them celebrating the passage of time since they were found, is extremely trivial. BTW, MySpace recently turned eleven. When writing posts and news, typically you want the headline to focus on a new feature, a new app, or if it'll be a number, focus on a meaningful number, like number of users, something that could engage those who aren't engaged right now. Way it is, a birthday party of some company I know little about is someone else's party, and I won't even open the article.

lemming 12y ago
That's your loss, in this case.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
rfrey 12y ago
a birthday party of some company I know little about is someone else's party Most of the value I get from HN, and social websites in general, is from people surfacing things I didn't know about.
- PeterGriffin 12y ago
  You have totally missed the point of my post, and I guess most of those that modded it. EDIT: Ok this is starting to get a little weird. What's with the comical negative overreaction to my posts. What exactly did I say to warrant that?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jarek 12y ago
    > What exactly did I say to warrant that? Ironically, you have missed the point of the blog post. It wasn't written to market the service, nor to engage those who aren't engaged right now. Your comment sounds like it was written by a marketoid or a growth hacker.

fmavituna 12y ago

What's the best way to use pinboard? Do you use bookmarklet or an extension? I tried the extension and the bookmarklet on their website but both have really sub-part experience in many levels. Are there any alternative and better ways to utilize pinboard?

seriocomic 12y ago
That's the great thing - it doesn't force you into any particular 'way'. Me personally - I use pinboard to 'bookmark' things I want to buy, I use Pocket for things I want to read, and I used Feedly for the river. How you mix that up is, and should be, up to you...
- fmavituna 12y ago
  I like the way you look at the things, very positive. The way I see, its experience is rubbish I can't even use it effectively :) All I want is to bookmark stuff and then go back and find them. Isn't that supposed to be core feature of a bookmarking website, what's it good for if the flow for that is simply bad, unpolished?
TarpitCarnivore 12y ago
Alfred.app workflow for accessing my bookmarks: http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-version-222-updated/?hl=pinboard http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-versio... A better bookmarklet: https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard https://github.com/joelcarranza/particular-pinboard Good guide to getting started: http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/ http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/

edsu 12y ago

How about we put a human face on pinboard users and tweet our stats (# of bookmarks, total storage, url) from our profile pages using the #pinboard5 tag? So for example something like: https://twitter.com/edsu/status/487193412631003137 https://twitter.com/edsu/status/487193412631003137

mcherm 12y ago
Sure! I've got 11,481 bookmarks, nearly all (except those tagged "personal_net") with descriptive notes. It's a wonderful service. And yes, I'm a paying customer. Not so much because I need the full-text search, but because I want the site to be profitable. (https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/)

trendyy 12y ago

When I first read Maciej's tweets and blogs early on I thought he was a cynical arsehole. As time went on I realised the tech industry could use a few more cynical arseholes.

a3n 12y ago

Huzzah!

mcherm 12y ago

> So the biggest risk in a project like this remains burnout. Actually, my biggest concern is a continuity plan. What happens to Pinboard (and my data) if Maciej gets "hit by a bus"?

tptacek 12y ago
A consortium of silent investors takes the site public. Also: parallax effects on the front page.
idlewords 12y ago
I would worry more about trips to Yemen, personally.
- kryptiskt 12y ago
  I'm sure that the armed escort comes courtesy of Pinboard users in the Yemeni government.
tnorthcutt 12y ago
https://pinboard.in/export/ https://pinboard.in/export/

joelcarranza 12y ago

Shameless plug: my pinboard iOS app Pinswift is on sale today for a dollar (down from 5) to celebrate Pinboard's birthday. If you are a Pinboard fan, or are just getting started, please consider trying out the app. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinswift-fast-powerful-pinboard/id766741240?ls=1&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinswift-fast-powerful-pinbo...

ehurrell 12y ago
I just signed up to Pinboard and got your app to help use it on iOS. Initial impressions are good, I like it a lot, but if I could make one feature request I would love to have another way to add bookmarks. If there was a big plus button I could hit in the top left that brought up the 'add bookmark' screen it'd be helpful. I already accidentally dismissed the 'do you want to add the clipboard's link', and I frequently copy full tweets with links I'd like to save (as link + description), (EDIT: these don't trigger the 'link in buffer' prompt). This might also be helpful for pinboard's linkless notes? Anyway, thanks for the great app :)

zetx 12y ago

Pinboard is indeed wonderful. What I find lacking is a replacement for the old Delicious Firefox extension which included a way to use [Delicious] bookmarked custom searches in the browser.

vardhanw 12y ago

I use diigo with almost all the benefits I could gather for pinboard from this thread - tagging, annotation, cloudsync, light, extensions, read later etc. And it is free. Am I missing something? I have thousands of bookmarks, searchable, easy access, one click bookmarking, etc. Is there an advantage to switch?

joereggan190 12y ago

Watch Germany vs Argentina Live http://campmediterraneo.com/en/node/36568 http://campmediterraneo.com/en/node/36568