Clipmarks celebrates its first birthday with a facelift and a new home page

So, a year ago Derek and I thought of the idea for clipmarks while i was driving home from work.  A phone call that lasted from 9pm to 7am the next morning produced enough clarity and conviction to halt everything we were working on (Amplify) to begin creating a prototype version of clipmarks.  We first released that prototype in September, 2005 (i guess you could say that we should have called it a pre-alpha and done a friends only invite because it really wasn't ready for prime time...oh well, you live and you learn).

Throughout the remainder of 2005, largely due to the addition of Adam Collett and Eric Weitner to the team, we rebuilt and redesigned clipmarks.  This culminated in a January 21, 2006 upload that introduced our reader style layout for displaying clipmarks.  Once again, we probably should have called that the release of Clipmarks Beta, as we now had a clear vision for how we wanted clipmarks to look, feel and work, but we had many kinks to iron out.

Over the past 5 months since then we have uploaded a lot of new features, worked out many bugs and implemented some really great ideas suggested by our users.  Now, the finishing touches are in place to mark the one year anniversary of the idea for clipmarks with a brand new home page and a polished user interface. 

On our new home page, we are no longer putting the emphasis on downloading our clipping tool, but are instead focusing on the rich assortment of clipped information that is available.  The site is full of clipmarks created, commented and popped by our users...thus, it is high time we put the focus on the clips and the people who create them!

We have chosen to initially select 8 channels  (technology, science, politics, funny, energy, health, entertainment, web 2.0) for our home page.  For each channel we will display the 3 most recently popped clipmarks with that tag.  Also, you will notice that there is now a real-time feed on the home page of the current most popular clipmarks on the site.   

In addition to our new home page you will also see that the site's design has been substantially worked on (much more attractive, cleaner and cooler looking in my opinion).  Lastly, take a look at the "Post to" button under each clipmark.  You'll see that we now support many more third party services (ex: furl, slashdot, newsvine, yahoo and others) to which clipmarks can be posted.

Though we have never properly set the expectations of our users by using pre-alpha, alpha or beta type labels, i now want to break from that tradition and declare that Clipmarks 1.0 is live.  I hope you enjoy it!!!

I am very excited for another great year of working towards our mission of building a filtered version of the Web that contains and promotes only the most clipworthy pieces of information at any given time as determined by the people who use it. 

Ok, time to start working on Clipmarks 2.0 :)

Comments

[O'Marin]

I use the "pre-alpha" release and guys, you are great!!!

The Clipmarks 1.0 homepage is wonderfull. great work!

[eric goldstein]

Thanks O'Marin...great to hear from an "old school" clipper!!!

[Mayank]

Well, I have to agree that the new page looks good and you guyz are going in the right direction as well :)
Keep up the work.

One more thing. What about the firefox extension. I think it also needs a little bit of face lift. May be simply make a menu like FILE EDIT VIEW one...and put the buttons in it.