About Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Flipboard and going beyond simple bookmarking
I wrote a blog post on the Licorize blog: http://bit.ly/bTDAPN connecting Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Flipboard and going beyond simple bookmarking for Licorize 1.0.
The limits of bookmark tagging
The main limit of creating a collection of bookmarks and tagging them lies in your interpretation of bookmarks. A bookmark from a formal point of view is an URL, but actually for the user in function of the context it can be a to-do, an idea, a goal…
You can have tags for types, along with “usual” tags, but the problem is behavior. You need links semantically classified as different to have different behavior. That is what Licorize does, more than Delicious and usual bookmarking services do.
Why your Delicious bookmarks end up being an unreadable mess?
I’ve been looking at friends’ Delicious accounts, and asking how they’ve been using them. An answer I got frequently is this:
When I started using it it was great. But as I kept bookmarking, I never did maintenance, and old links that have become irrelevant are always there and I could no longer see what was relevant and what not. It ended being an unreadable cloud and so I stopped using it.
In Licorize too you preserve all bookmarks, but maintenance comes naturally from the fact that you distribute bookmarks into “teams at work” i.e. projects, ideas, presentations – and also because the user interface is more reactive and allows more “in place” actions. Delicious basic approach is flat – which is great at the beginning, but in time is not enough in many cases.
Want to try it out? Licorize has a complete Delicious bookmarks import.
A note for Licorize alpha version: a great feature that Delicious has and Licorize currently doesn’t is sharing bookmarks at an URL – we’re building that and there too we are trying to do something better than a plain list. It will be something similar to what Flipboard does to Tweet lists.
A Q&A site on Copywriting & applications
I have submitted a proposal for a community site on Area51 of StackExchange, concerning “Copywriting & applications”:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/14040/copywriting-applications
with this explanation:
Proposed Q&A site for copywriters that have questions concerning copy in general and specific applications and media.
There are already proposals that are vaguely related to this topic, e.g.
On Writing in general: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1623/writing
And technical writing: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/8847/technical-writing
but copy is a quite specific skill, and knowledge necessary for its application in different media is considerable. Writing copy is a profession(*) and hence I believe it deserves a dedicated Q&A site.
There is also a proposal concerning copy, Blogging and Copywriting: but this too me too restrictive, in particular considering that the same copy often gets used in different kinds of publications.
So… support and contribute to this proposal!
Note (*): E.g. read
My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic: Everything You Need to Know About Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries and Weren’t Afraid to Ask
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Name-Charles-Saatchi-Artoholic-Everything/dp/0714857475
Summer readings on copy for web marketing
My friend Simone Zinanni (not the fake one) from Develer of Better Software and Pycon3 fame asked me whether I had some web marketing copy readings for the summer.
I already wrote about my efforts in Learning home made copywriting. The basic problem for copywriting is that you have to have something to say, and have enough imagination to see how interesting it could be for non informed readers. Assuming this, you then need
(1). general writing skills,
and
(2). specific knowledge for marketing copy.
For point (1), it is hard to pick out readings: learning to write well is a vague and hard task. I am studying fiction writing, and this has helped a great deal, but I can’t single out an instructional book for this task. Like, an exercise could be: read (or better: re-read) one of Stieg Larsson books, and try to find out the techniques he uses to keep the attention of the reader. He is a master in that (though I don’t particularly like the books).
Point 2 also involves knowledge of the specific market for which you are writing, and familiarity with marketing technioques. For this, I find Seth Godin books a great help.
For web sites on copy I advise http://www.copyblogger.com/, in particular
http://www.copyblogger.com/copywriting-101/
For readings,
though it is not specifically about copy for web marketing, some good ideas from an old copy of some success
:
My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic: Everything You Need to Know About Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries and Weren’t Afraid to Ask
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Name-Charles-Saatchi-Artoholic-Everything/dp/0714857475
Have a good summer.




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