Collaborative bookmarking with lists
Earlier this month we added stars in search so that you can easily mark and rediscover your favorite websites. Today we're debuting lists in Google Bookmarks, an experimental new feature that helps you easily share those sites with friends.
Context & Ripple Effects
Lists in Google Bookmarks is the company's third run at lightweight social sharing inside an existing product, following Google Shared Stuff in 2007 and the shared-items feed in Google Reader in 2009. Both earlier efforts stayed small, which makes the experimental label on this launch telling: Google is testing whether bookmarking, rather than a dedicated sharing destination, is where people actually want to curate for friends.
First-order effects
- Users who adopted stars in Search earlier this month now have a companion feature for turning private marks into shareable collections with friends.
Second-order effects
- If lists gain traction, Google faces a choice between promoting Bookmarks into a real curation product or folding the mechanic into another surface, repeating the pattern set by Shared Stuff and Reader's sharing.
Third-order effects
- The launch extends Google's habit of bolting social features onto search and reader products as experiments instead of committing to a standalone social service — an approach whose limits its own prior attempts have already exposed.
The trend: Search companies are treating personal saving and friend-sharing as one continuous workflow, iterating through experimental add-ons rather than dedicated products.