Speaking of anniversary, Pinboard turns five this year. It‘s one of the essential add-on I have, something I‘ve come to depend heavily upon.
Just like a hammer – always the supporting cast, never in the limelight. But when it comes to the real value, its usefulness cannot be undermined.
Every once a while, I like to browse through the bookmarks and remind myself what made me want to archive them in the first place. Then I get some housekeeping done – clearing away links I have no use for and tagging some bookmarks to give it more context.
Sometimes, I would re-read some of my favourite guides, stories, recipes, reviews and some interesting stuffs. Though I still need to work on organising the tags to make the links more relevant and searchable, I‘m pretty happy with how Pinboard functions. It has integrate seamlessly into my triage of reading; referencing and archiving.
Looking at some of the statistics, there are some interesting numbers and information. For one, I have 835 bookmarks since I joined 1.5 years back. All of them are private. And the interesting fact is I actually have one follower. Who would have followed a boring and unknown user like me, I have no idea. Saving the public‘s eyes from stumbling upon my mundane links is the reason why I made them all private. That‘s the conventional and political answer if anyone is interested to find out. For the anonymous follower (fan) of mine, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I‘ve subscribed to the archiving service – it‘s not cheap at $25, and rarely do the bookmarks I have broke down. But just like insurance and backup, you have it to prepare for the worst case scenario. On occasion when you really need it, you’ll forever be grateful that you have it in place.
Maciej Cegłowski nails it when he said what people what want out of Pinboard is stability. The service and website just has to work, to keep on running, to minimise downtime. Plain as it is, there‘s no need to add bells and whistles.
I liken it like Instapaper when Marco was running it a one-man show. It does one thing and it does it extremely well. Aesthetically, it‘s not the best, just like Pinboard is now. But since it got acquired by BetaWorks, the design has improved ten-folds and more features like highlighting have been added in. Now, it seems like everything has been reved up a notch at least. While the same can happen to Pinboard, it‘s not happening now, and it will not happen!
In his typical mischievous, self-deprecating and malicious tone, he cautioned:
My strategy of pre-emptively antagonizing anyone who might possibly have an interest in acquiring or funding the site has worked wonderfully. In five years, I haven‘t received a single email from an investor or potential acquirer. The closest I came was a few months ago, when the new Delicious owners reached out to me about providing “vision“, but I think they were just unfamiliar with my oeuvre. They learned quickly.
And ended with this:
Thank you to all the people who have used the site over the years, and the many people who have helped me build it and keep it running. To my competitors: I will crush you! To everyone else: you‘re wonderful! Upgrade!
Congrats for this mini milestone, and cheers to many more five years to come.