Thing 66: AllMyFaves & 43 Marks

This discovery exercise has us looking at AllMyFaves and 43 Marks.

AllMyFaves has living breathing people selecting the best of the web and categorizing it for you, sort of like the early days of Yahoo or the DMOZ Open Directory Project with Google.

I was really surprised to still see the logos for Washington Mutual, Wachovia, and UBS under the banks category because of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. I was also surprised to see Second Life in the chat category. I guess it could be called 3D chat. I haven't exactly thought of it that way but I guess it makes sense. I think that it is interesting that they include news readers like Bloglines in the Blogs category but don't include photo editors in the photo cateogory like Picnik. And where is Yahoo! Chat in the chat category? I thought they were the largest chat service. Has someone surpassed them? Also there is no Wired magazine in the Tech category. OK, I'm really starting to get concerned about this site listing the "best" sites in their respective categories. Maybe AllMyFaves is exactly that, the favorite sites of the developers.

I checked out LiveLeak in the video category and yes it is a video site that leaks video media to the public. I also took a look at Break.com and yes it was in the correct category (videos). It's theme is free videos, pictures and comedy for guys.

Then I signed up at 43 Marks to take a look at their start page. It seems like everyone is getting on the start page band wagon. My favorite start page was a part of YourMinis, which they have shut down but still offer widgets to put on other start pages, websites and blogs. We talked about widgets in Thing 26. After YourMinis closed their startpage I moved to Netvibes. I based this on popularity and also it was rated #1 in the 2008 Seomoz Web 2.0 Awards. The organization of 43 Marks is very clean and simple. Simplicity and ease of use are good traits to have. But the layout of the site I think is better for someone who has only a few bookmarks to keep up with, not the 773 like I have on Delicious.com. Also someone who likes the clean lines of Facebook, Google, or BookJetty might also enjoy 43Marks.

I took a look at Propeller in the Info/Ads category. According to its decription: "Propeller is a social news portal, meaning that it is programmed by you — the audience. Our members post links to stories from all over the Web." Hmm, shouldn't it be in a social news category like Digg? 43Marks didn't have a news category. Then I took a look at Kijiji in the same Info/Ads category and this time yes it was classified correctly--it is a Free Local Classified Ad site.

I can see someone using AllMyFaves and 43Marks as a crash course introduction to Web 2.0. But depending on your tastes and style, you might find yourself moving on to other places to organize your social networking and newsfeed day.