Mac and iPhone-friendly alternatives to Delicious

30.12.2010
The bad news recently arrived that Yahoo, the struggling search/media/something-or-other Internet giant, . The company is also a handful of products—, a popular online bookmarking service used widely in Mac and iOS apps, was rumored to be on the "sunset" list, but . Still, with the future of Delicious in the air, social bookmarkers may feel like Yahoo is leaving your treasure trove of links hanging in the cloud.

Since Delicious is, at its core, a Web-based service that was made more useful with Mac and iPhone apps, let’s start there. Delicious has a number of diverse Web-based alternatives that offer varying features, and some are more popular than others among third-party apps like bookmarking utilities and newsreaders. The services I listed also have at least one Mac or iPhone client, but if you’re looking for Mac-only desktop apps, move on to the next section farther below.

is probably your best shot in terms of making the most lateral move from Delicious’s interface and features (I switched to Pinboard a while ago). Its Website is very straightforward and stays out of your way, and it helps you get over the first big hurdle with instructions on exporting your Delicious bookmarks and importing them into Pinboard. It offers a ton of features Delicious never did, like automatically collecting links you share on your Twitter and Instapaper accounts, downloading full copies of your bookmarked pages for archival and offline viewing (a paid upgrade option), and placemarks for map locations, not just URLs. Plus, Pinboard already has steam with third-party developers, as a number of Mac and iPhone clients already support it, including Delibar and Reeder, as well as dedicated iPad browsers like Skyfire and Cyberspace. The one potential downside for some Delicious refugees? Pinboard charges a small one-time signup fee to cover server costs and pay employees, and a few premium features (like offline archives of Webpages) cost an upgrade fee. On the upside, that fee should go a long way towards helping Pinboard to keep the lights on better than Yahoo did with Delicious.

(Image Caption: Pinboard)

is another fairly lateral move in terms of features and familiarity, though with a slight twist. While Xmarks is Web-based, it is primarily a service for syncing your bookmarks between all your browsers and computers. The company offers plugins for Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and even Internet Explorer, and you can also access your bookmarks online, just like Delicious, at Xmarks.com. You may lose some of the organizational flexibility that Delicious (and other services mentioned here) offer since most browsers (and Xmarks, by extension) use traditional bookmark folders instead of tags. But Xmarks has a freemium model that’s tuned pretty well for all users. Almost all of the service’s most popular features are free, but if you want a couple of upgrades like a client for your iPhone or Android phone, or the ability to sync your open tabs between browsers and computers, Xmarks’s premium plan is just $12 per year. One catch, however, is that while Xmarks has a built-in tool for importing from Delicious, it only snags your most recent 100 bookmarks. The company says . But as of this writing, if you have more than 100 bookmarks, your best bet is to follow Delicious’s instructions for importing your bookmarks into one of your browsers and then installing Xmarks.