ClipMarks addiction

I’ll admit it. I’m addicted. ClipMarks turns out to fit very well with my existing Internet habits, and it has been a lot of fun to use. The site—which allows you to copy selected images and text from a web page to put some content with the URL—just got bought by Forbes, a company that has expressed some interest in the community for several months.

I started using ClipMarks last June and was instantly impressed with the browser tool that facilitates clipping pages. The nice colorful paperclip button changes the mode of a page from browsing to clipping, highlighting the clipped content in bright orange boxes with green borders. From there, it is a simple matter to title and tag the clip to share with others in the community, or to post a quick clipmark to an integrated blog. My clipmarks-only blog, ClipSchmip, is hosted on WordPress.com, one of the standard blogging services with hooks into ClipMarks.

With a half year of use under my belt, I have a few observations about my experiences with the site:

Best. Tools. Ever.
I am very enamored with the tools ClipMarks offers and the ease in which they integrate with my normal routines. The website itself is easy to navigate, reviewing and saving clips as well as exploring the people who contribute them. The two-click blogging option is also very nice, making it easy to share clips off channel (although it would be nice if I could link it to a privately hosted blog, like this one). Most impressive, though, is the little green paperclip button that persists at the top of my browser. It is way too easy to go from finding a web page to be interesting and formatting a ClipMark to share. All communities should have low barriers to entry, and the browser tool is an excellent example of a low barrier.

I Clip to Share
Since ClipMarks is first and foremost a community, the main motivation for creating a clip is to share it with other people. There is quite a bit of overlap with other clippers, though, so there is a bit of a competition to create the first clip of a nice science article. I don’t even bother clipping things from TechCrunch or other similar blogs, since that is covered in spades. Since stories cycle through the spheres of blogs and websites, the same content is often repeated, with the more visible clipper getting the “pops” to make the clip more prominent.

I Clip to Remember
A large percentage of my clips, though, are for my own personal use. It is another place where I can feel OK about collecting links to websites without needing it to rise to the level of a BlogSchmog post or even a tweet. ClipMarks is for the interesting stuff I want to have a chance of rediscovering later but not necessarily worthy of sharing with my other information circles.

ClipMarks is about discovery
There was a time (oh, back in freakin’ June) that the founders, Eric Goldstein and Eric Skiff, did a week-daily podcast of the interesting things they discovered through the work of the ClipMarks community. I even got a mention once on Clipiversity (woot!). But then Eric G had a kid, and time was absorbed by diapers. I miss that channel, but discovery of new content can still be done the old fashioned way by looking at the website or by following ClipMarks on Twitter.

RSS Killed the ClipMark Star
Tyler introduced me to Google Reader, and I started using it reluctantly mid summer. There’s no going back now, as I follow some 355 feeds from blogs and news sites and rely on it for new information more than I do email. The unfortunate byproduct of this obsession was a marked decrease in my clipping habits. I still contribute and follow the ClipMarks community, but RSS is king and stole some of the value.

Hi, Norms!
I’m wondering how long it will be until there is a Digger Commandments for ClipMarks. Like Digg, this community imbues content with value through a voting system, called Pops, that help the cream rise to the top. The popping, though, is a rich-get-richer kind of scheme that doesn’t always reward the best editing of web content or allow redundancy to be identified and linked or merged. Eric G did exert some early moral code to what is clipped or said, saying that it is something mothers read, but beyond that the norms of the community are still being developed. I suspect they will become a bigger issue once the site grows under Forbes.

I smell an academic paper
High on my agenda of things to do once I’m done doing the things I need to do is to get in touch with one of the Erics and inquire about studying the network of members and content that has developed since the site was launched. There are a number of ways two members can be connected (followers, pops, comments, profile, experience) and content is related (tags, pops, comments, URL, topic). That makes for an interesting network just crying out for some academic analysis.

Congratulations on a successful startup, Eric(s).