FURL CHANGES HANDS

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This week Diigo acquired associate social-bookmarking use Furl from LookSmart, the San Francisco online promotion company. Terms weren’t disclosed, though LookSmart pronounced in the matter in would embrace “a intensity equity position” in Diigo in sell for Furl.

LookSmart paid for Furl in 2004, as well as whilst it reached one million users, it didn’t utterly locate upon identical to Delicious, that has 5 million users as well as was acquired by Yahoo in 2005.

LookSmart’s unloading of Furl isn’t the initial converging done in the social-bookmarking space this year. Yahoo not long ago closed down MyWeb in sequence to concentration upon Delicious, as well as Google only shuttered Shared Stuff.

Yesterday, as LookSmart discussed the gain with analysts, CEO Ted West pronounced the association faced multiform hurdles with Furl. “We did see estimable commoditization of amicable bookmarking services as well as their accessibility opposite the web — commoditization in conditions of numbers of providers,” he said.

It’s formidable to interpret Web trade to these services in to revenue, he added, as well as the awaiting of offering resources “simply dusty up in the past year, quite the second half of the year.”

Diigo allows users to emanate as well as share lists of bookmarked Web sites that can be highlighted as well as annotated, as well as Furl offering the identical service. But Diigo insists that the investigate apparatus is “substantially some-more powerful. If you still cite to tag Diigo as ‘social bookmarking,’ you consider it would be suitable to call it ‘Social Bookmarking 2.0,’” the association says upon the Web site. Whatever the disproportion is, the association will shortly launch the Diigo 4.0 platform, that it says will “[take] the amicable bookmarking/annotation to brand new heights.”

In the blogosphere, users discussed the merits of Diigo contra Delicious as well as their assorted facilities as well as tools. Diigo user William Doust raved about the service: “del.ico.us - is obsolete - that’s the ice age where i was during b4,” he wrote. “Now we chatter anotated pages from Diigo, send Diigo annotated short-urls to non-diigo poeple. It builds village discovery! so most to offer! - adore it.” But blogger Amir wrote pessimistically of the acquisition, “sounds identical to the remains buys the passed body.”

Source: Marisa Taylor

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