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Bookmarks Are Dead

September 13, 2010

At least to me. I noticed the other day that I almost never use bookmarks anymore. A year or two ago I was a bookmark junky, having 500+ easily. So what changed? In reflecting upon it, I think there are a few reasons for this…

  • I switched to using Chrome whenever I’m not doing web development (Firebug is just too awesome to give up). The way Chrome is designed the bookmarks aren’t exactly a prime, in-your-face feature which are easily accessible — at least not in the way Firefox and Internet Explorer implement it.
  • I use Twitter much more than I did in past years. A lot (and by lot I’d say 50% at least) of the new sites I visit are from links seen on Twitter. I follow people who tweet about topics I’m interested in (@smashingmag, @sixrevisions, @activestate, @cssbeauty, @usejquery) and thus click a lot of links that are posted.
  • Instead of “surfing the web” looking for new sites, as was all the rage in the 90’s, I tend to frequent the same sites, often times which serve in some part as content aggregation — and I already know their address. Why do I need to bookmark it?
  • Chrome Pinned Tabs — Sites I really frequent have a permanent Chrome tab to keep them open.
  • Chrome Address Bar — Why waste the time to find a bookmark when you can just type something relatively close to what you want into the address bar and get instant results?

(Why are 3 of the 5 related to Chrome? Google conspiracy theories ignite…)