I am trying to keep my eyes open at the moment, always on the look out for interesting Web2.0 projects, but the line between success and failure, from both a commercial and functional perspective, is a thin one. Ma.gnolia, a new social bookmarking site, is well in the failure zone. This may be a bit aggressive but I think there is enough to be said in support of this view.

Ma.gnolia is a project assisted by Happy Cog, a company founded by the overbearing, yet iconic, Zeldman. Happy Cog also publish the web magazine, A List Apart (ALA), a site that in the past had been a Mecca for good-coding and proper web development practice. I used to look forward to lazy Sundays, reading ALA, black coffee in hand. That site however, has now lost its way, with mediocre articles written by attention seeking web developers looking more to boost their PageRank in Google than to contribute ground-breaking theory to the web community. A browse of the article comments of the past 12 months, confirms that I am not the only reader unconvinced by the drop in the quality of ALA’s copy.

Hence, when the creators of ALA, helped with Ma.gnolia I was intrigued at the possibilities of redemption but was instantly repelled by something that has tried to jump on the bandwagon but instead has missed and landed flat on pavement.

To start, the name needs some consideration. Ma.gnolia as a name is not exactly catchy, as non-descriptive brand names go. However, that is not my main bone of contention. It is the placing of the ‘dot’ between the ‘a’ and ‘g’, aping most notably its major competitor, del.icio.us. However, the ‘dot’ is not only unnecessary but seeming in the wrong place as the first syllable ends after the third not the second letter. Moreover, one of the justifications given for this site in the social bookmarking market is, according to preoccupations.org, who quote Zeldman, to open up bookmarking to more web users:

There are still lots of people out there who haven’t even heard of social bookmarking, or didn’t know you could simply store your bookmarks online. We hope to reach those people with a style and way of working that will appeal to them.

How on earth they plan to open up social bookmarking to the less IT-centric members of the web-browsing community, with such a name and it’s bizarre ‘dot’ is beyond my comprehension. I just have to think of my parent’s generation and know they would be utterly confused by the domain name alone.

After grappling with the URL the user is faced with a weak design, (see Greg Storey) that fails to draw the eye, and a multitude of adverts. The featured linkers section is dull and the bookmarks featured are far to IT-centric for a site that is pitching at the less-techy end of the market. The gripe continues, and at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, the scrolling aspect of the site is annoying and the star system irrelevant. The use of a private message box is also unnecessary. Why not work with messaging technologies people are used to like email (Flickr also stubbles at this particular hurdle)?

I think this site misses the mark completely. It falls into the trap of doing things because they can be done, rather than because they they should be done. I am no big del.icio.us evangelist or Happy Cog/Zeldman hater but when a site like this raises it head above the parapet and people rave about it because it has been made by a ‘web celeb’, a large dose of reality is needed.

[Image c/o Airbag]

[2 minor edits made 01 Feb 2007 based on point of clarification]

Despite this dislike of conferences, the Carson Workshops Summit (’summit’, now thats classic managementese - it doesn’t bode well!) on Feb 8th in London has some pretty inspiring speakers from the latest and greatest web sites at the moment:

1. 09:00 - 09:45
   Registration
2. 10:00 - 10:45
   Why Tagging is Crucial to your Web App
   Joshua Schachter - Delicious
3. 11:00 - 11:45
   Ajax - How to Give Users the Rich Interactivity They Want
   Eric Costello - Flickr
4. 12:00 - 12:45
   Designing Web 2.0-native Products for Fun and Profit
   Tom Coates - Yahoo!
5. 12:45 - 1:30
   Lunch
6. 1:30 - 2:15
   Happy Programming and Sustainable Productivity with Ruby on Rails
   David Heinemeier Hansson - 37signals
7. 2:30 - 3:15
   10 Reasons Why You Need to Build an API
   Shaun Inman - Mint
8. 3:15 - 3:30
   Flex
   Andrew Shorten - Adobe
9. 3:45 - 4:30
   How to Build an Enterprise Web App on a Budget
   Ryan Carson - DropSend
10. 4:45 - 5:30
    Google Labs
    Steven Crossan & Douwe Osinga - Google
11. 5:45 - 6:30
    Panel Discussion

I am going to bite the bullet and check in out - I am sure there will be some useful brain fodder.

The point of this post is not to plug a ‘digital-to-print’ site. The thing that QOOP illustrates nicely is that to make a good internet site, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Utilitilising APIs, XML and RSS feeds allows an excellent site to be created, for lower initial development cost. Just look at the number of people who are making the most of the Google Maps API (blog). When traffic is high enough, then perhaps consider the transition to developing in-house tools, but in the early days of a new site, one trick is to hit the ground running with content supported by syndicated tools and feeds.