All Entries Tagged With: "propeller"
Delicious Gets A Facelift
Earlier this week I blasted Propeller for its new look. It clearly was a step down. Today I’ve got another social bookmarking service as my target. And this time I’m going to praise them for their new look.
Delicious did things the right way. We heard about Delicious planning a new look last year. And it took every bit of the entire year to tinker, test, and roll it out. It is evident that AOL didn’t go through that trouble to introduce the new version of Propeller. But here’s what I like about the new Delicious:
- It’s beautiful – The new design is a huge improvement over the old the design. Bravo!
- It’s not a drastic change – Yes, Delicious looks different, but it’s not a drastic change. The format is still basically the same as it was before. It just looks a little bit more Web 2.0, or 21st century.
- The bookmarking process was streamlined – Propeller gets kudos on this, but unlike Propeller, Delicious didn’t drop any essential features. They kept all the same features as before, but now they’re prettier and work better.
- A new domain name – If you type in the old URL – del.icio.us – you’ll be redirected to the new one at http://delicious.com. That may seem insignificant, but it isn’t. Delicious is popular enough that people will hear about it from a friend and try to type it into their web browser. What will they type? No one will intuitively figure out del.icio.us, but almost everyone will automatically go for delicious.com. It’s intuitive and it was a brilliant move.
- I didn’t lose any friends from my network in the process – Propeller killed my friends. Delicious saved them. Do I really need to elaborate?
- Figuring out subscriptions is easier – I couldn’t figure out how to start a subscription with the old Delicious. I’ve already started two with the new Delicious. Great going guys!
- The tag cloud is cool - I’m not a big fan of tag clouds, but when I click on the “Tags” link in my profile, I see a big tag cloud with all of my tags and it looks cool. At a glance, I can see what my most popular tags are. I can do the same with my network of friends. Awesome!
- Saving bookmarks from my network of friends is just like it used to be - Wow! Can you do that? Propeller didn’t. They made it more cumbersome even while they made other aspects of their service less cumbersome.
I like the new Delicious. I will likely use it more often now. I will definitely use it more often than Propeller. Before Propeller’s remake, I liked it better than Delicious but not as much as StumbleUpon or Mixx. Now, Delicious has moved into my No. 3 spot and Propeller is dropping. Aren’t facelifts fun?
Stop Recommending Propeller, Please!
More and more, I see social bookmarkers recommending Propeller as one of the best bookmarking sites. Before their recent face change, I’d have agreed. Now I wouldn’t send my dog to Propeller – even if he thought it was a tree.
What’s So Wrong With Propeller?
It’s the design.
Before the redesign, Propeller had some issues, primarily technical. It was cumbersome, for instance, to try and send a prop to your friends. You could only send bookmarks to five friends and then you had to send another internal message. Plus, if you wanted to bookmark someone else’s material then it was at least a three-step process, and country music was never my thang. Bad puns aside, Propeller had a Coke moment.
The Deep Propeller Analysis
For starters, Propeller now looks like AOLs battered wife. You would think by the top menu that AOL users were the only people who used Propeller. That wasn’t true before the redesign, but it may be true after it. Propeller would have been better off not associating itself with AOL at all.
The color scheme is awful. I loved the previous color scheme despite the aforementioned technical difficulty of sending out props to my friends. And speaking of friends, since the redesign, I’ve lost half of mine. They just disappeared. I went through all that trouble to network with people and add them to my friend’s list only to have Propeller kidnap them and throw them off the plane. Not a smart move.
Propeller’s new architecture makes it look like the female version of Mixx, which isn’t good. I like Mixx, but one of the things that I do like about it is it’s uniqueness. Propeller just stole that away. The layout isn’t exactly like Mixx, but it does have a little bit of a Mixx flavor to it, only softer and more feminine. The hard blue of Propeller’s previous existence is gone and has been replaced by the tampon blue of today. It makes me want to stand in front of the mirror and primp myself until I overdose on the melodic overtones of up-and-coming boy bands.
Note to Propeller: Get rid of the Love Me Tender blue highlights and silly looking Jeeves character and put some meat on for grill.
One Thing Propeller Did Right
The redesign wasn’t a complete loss, however. Propeller did do at least one thing right. It is now easier to vote for stories that have already been submitted. It’s a two-step process. Read it and click on “Prop It”. Simple and easy. I like that.
I do a lot of bookmarking. I’ve worked out a system with some of my friends where we send each other spreadsheets with the names of articles and where they’ve been bookmarked. All I have to do is click on the link in the spreadsheet and bookmark a story. Before, I had to click the link, open the story, and vote. Now, I just click the link and vote. Very simple.
I don’t know, beyond that, whether Propeller has improved its system for sending messages to other users because I’ve decided to limit my use of it based on its design. I don’t like looking at it. It’s ugly, and I don’t date ugly girls. Never did. One thing I did notice, though, was that when other users send me a message to check out a story they want me to vote on, I cannot click the URL of the story. It’s a copy/paste job and that just won’t cut it. I’ll still use Propeller, but it will be on a limited basis. It’s time to re-introduce the original formula. Call the Coca-Cola Company and ask them how well that plan worked for them.
In Other Social Bookmarking News
Mixx is having technical issues today. I’ve never seen that before. With everything I try to bookmark I get an error message. Hmmm….
New bookmarking sites are popping up on the ME TLD. I’ve found two already and will likely find more before the end of the week. UPP.me is one site and Uan.me is another. What’s this mean? I don’t know, but you can bet it probably has something to do with a darned propagated myth. Or, maybe not.
