Blinklist
Blinklist gives you your own website with your bookmarks, that you can organize and personalize however you want. It also has a button that goes onto your browser, so that you can “blink” any website that you like. The website makes the claim that it’s easier than clicking on your “add to favorites,” and I guess they would be right.
Blinklist is really easy to use, so that if you just want to save your favorite sites, all you have to do is blink what you like. There are more complex options, and of course, you can share your blinks with your friends as well. Users create profiles so that you can see what other people are blinking, and the site ranks the most blinked and most popular contributors. All of these functions are user-friendly.
The profile page looks something like Myspace. You have basic information about the contributor, who they’re friends with, what tags they like, and a listing of their blinked sites.
It’s a little tough to find out what’s popular on Blinklist. Without registering, you can take the tour, which doesn’t really give you any useful information. The front page has a list of the most popular tags, and most of them sound like porn sites or something to do with gothic culture. From this, I assume there are no guidelines about what you can blink.
Blinklist would be a great site for networking. It’s more like Myspace or Friendster than a regular social bookmarking site. It would be a good way to find like-minded people and share sites with them, than to do research or look for specific content.
Blinklist has some special features for teachers. On your page, you can save sites and tag them with things like “week 1 reading” or “mid-term paper” which can make them really useful and easy to retrieve. If you’re a student, you can use Blinklist to organize your files and access them anywhere. You can also give a site a “check back” tag if you don’t have time to read it right away, but want to have a look at it later.
Also, teachers can create a Blinklist community with all their students. They can share assignments and do communications on the site. I haven’t come across a feature quite like this on any other social bookmarking sites. It’s a cool new way for teachers to use internet technology in a fun, user-friendly way.
