Curating and sharing links on the web is a hot space.Delicious has relaunched, and services we’ve written about likeSnip.itare trying to get you to share all of your links on its service.
Utopicgoes a step further in helping you discover and share links, videos, music, and pictures that are relevant to you with its brand new gorgeous design and visual bookmarking launch.
Utopic had this to sayabout its new visual bookmarking feature:
With one click you can now save, tag, share and later quickly recover anything on the internet that you find interesting. The same goes for your favourites and links already shared on social networks. Utopic allows you to automatically import and publish those links in a beautiful visual profile. Topic-based content discovery through other people sharing your interests is still there as well, albeit with a new design and navigation.
Discovery
When you sign-up forUtopic, you can connect your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google reader accounts. The service will then import all of your shared links and media and save them as bookmarks within the site for automatic tagging. This gives Utopic an idea of what type of content you’d be interested in. The results are pretty spot-on.
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Once you’ve connected your accounts,Utopictakes about a half hour to go through your links. Once that process takes place, the home page starts giving you content based on your tastes. The service also displays topic tags and suggested friends to follow on the right hand side as well.
The design isvisually stunning, and doesn’t make you feel like there are too many options, something other bookmark sharing sites suffer from. The focus is clearly on the content, which changes as you refresh the page.
Sharing is caring
Sharing content can be done in two ways. Once you discover something on theUtopicsite, you can share it to any of your connected accounts with a click of a button. Of course, the fact that you shared something will factor back into Utopic finding more relevant stories for you, so it pays to share what you like using the service.
The second way to share using Utopic is its new visual bookmarking feature, which is actually really nice. When you visit a site or piece of content that you like and want to share or save for yourself, you can simply use their bookmarklet, click “<3 it", and you’re given a very lovely window that shows you how the content will be saved. The service even dynamically creates tags based on the content you’re sharing. That feature sets it apart from the rest. You’re able to add notes to the content, as well as tags later on if you like.
The only limitation of the service is thatUtopicdoesn’t tell you exactly how or why it’s showing you content. I would personally like to know the context of why a certain video or picture is shown. Right now, you’re only told who originally shared it. That’s something, but not enough to make me really trust what Utopic is showing me. The results were very very relevant for me, so I’m not complaining, but as I use the service more I’d like to see a bit more insight into why things are described as “hot topics” for me.
Story byDrew Olanoff
Drew Olanoff was The Next Web’s West Coast Editor. He coined the phrase “Social Good” and invented the “donation by action” model for onlin(show all)Drew Olanoff was The Next Web’s West Coast Editor. He coined the phrase “Social Good” and invented the “donation by action” model for online charitable movements. He founded #BlameDrewsCancer. You can follow him onTwitter,Google+,Facebook, or emaildrew@thenextweb.com
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