
Pinboard Turns Five - thisisblurry
https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/
======
firebones
I love Maciej's writing. His recent post on idlewords.com about his trip to
Yemen was great, and his annual reports on Pinboard are up there with Buffett
in terms of eloquence and wry humor that just skirts the edges of being
laconic.

I also love Pinboard, as well as joshu's original del.icio.us, and all
services that find that completely narrow utility that I like to call
"stripped and liberated". Stripped in the sense that they seek to do one thing
well, on the face of humanity, forever. Liberated in the sense that they are
liberated from the need to be beholden to investors or broader corporate
strategies which shred their utility and focus in service of some other
imperative.

Has the day of the "stripped and liberated" service come and gone? Or are
there still opportunities waiting to be discovered?

~~~
walterbell
Stardock (one of the few indie desktop ISVs) also writes an independent annual
report. Their 2014 report talks about the Windows 8 start button and the
economics of mobile apps.

[http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/](http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/)

~~~
quickpost
Really cool, thanks for sharing!

------
mzehrer
Maciej's post "Don't be a free user"
[[https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/)]
is still one of my favourites. The whole concept of doing something that is
"just big enough" in ways of financial success and scaling is so liberating.
You will end up doing something sustainable instead of constantly worrying
about the outcome of your "startup" adventure. I even adopted the one-time
payment business model for my own service [crofflr.com] which is so
refreshingly anti-business, you will meet users that activley complain that
they can't pay you more. And after meeting Maciej in real life (hope to see
you again here in Berlin) and learning how much he cares about Pinboard and
it's users, I'm totally convinced that this is the right way to do business
and that it's okay to ignore all the flashy Yo, Snapchat and Pinterest crap
out there. I really like the idea of Mom&Pop businesses on the internet.

~~~
MattBearman
The end of that post is beautiful:

    
    
      DISCLAIMER: I run a paid bookmarking site. Every morning 
      I wake up and dive into my vault of golden coins.

------
sdevlin
Pinboard is an awesome service. If you don't have an account, you should. It's
especially refreshing for those (like me) who despise the Internet of
JavaScript Bullshit. Pinboard is fast as hell because it doesn't waste your
time with flashy nonsense.

Second: Maciej is a great writer. If you're not reading his articles
([http://www.idlewords.com/](http://www.idlewords.com/)), you should be.

~~~
smellf
Yeah this guy is a really engaging writer. Just because this is HN, I have to
call out his post on Paul Graham:

[http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)

It's from 2005 so a lot of the links are dead now, but I was able to dredge up
the link to PG's painting:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20050409001349/http://store1.yim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050409001349/http://store1.yimg.com/I/paulgraham_1837_63071)

------
danso
Was just about to go to bed but felt compelled to comment on this. Several
years ago, or whenever Pinboard was a little less than $9, I signed up for it
on a whim but kind of thought my coworker was crazy...except for content sites
(i.e. Spotify and Netflix)... _paying_ for an online service just seemed
alien, and paying for a bookmarking service, a feature that has been
functional in browsers for a long while...that seemed completely bonkers (I
never got into delicio.us or its competitors). The only reason I can possibly
think of for having joined was that my co-worker is much smarter and more
efficient than I am.

Today, Pinboard is to me the epitome of a life/work-enhancing product...I use
it daily to capture HN links, it's incredibly unintrusive, and not once since
I've been on it has it been down when I've needed to refer to my bookmarks. I
keep forgetting that I've already paid a one-time fee for it, and if it
decided to secretly charge me on a reoccurring basis, I probably wouldn't
notice and might not even care.

I don't think it's coincidence that my fondness of Pinboard correlates with
how I've changed as a developer, becoming much less interested in do-it-all
frameworks such as Rails, and aspiring to spend more time at the command line.
I've had a much greater appreciation for simplicity, not because I'm
particularly Zen, but because I don't want a service or a program or a
framework to do everything for me. In the journalism/research world, people
frequently discuss tips and advice on bookmarking apps. I keep pushing
Pinboard.in but I don't think many people have been interested in it. Why
would they pay for it when all it does is record bookmarks in plaintext,
whereas Evernote saves so many different kinds of media, has an iPad app, and
is free, even if it crashes once in awhile and can be unpredictable in how it
saves content, etc. etc...but hey, it seems like a _real product_ , right?

I just shake my head. It took me a few years of pain to realize that even the
slightest bit of friction prevents a tool from being used daily...and when
your job depends on quick, efficient information retrieval, a non-daily tool
is hazardous...but I only learned it through experience. So, Pinboard will
always be a great product to me, but I'm not going to put much energy into
evangelizing for it :)

~~~
tree_of_item
"and paying for a bookmarking service, a feature that has been functional in
browsers for a long while...that seemed completely bonkers"

Can you explain why you now think Pinboard is better than the native
bookmarking features in every browser?

~~~
jarek
I'm not OP but tagging and search are the big ones for me. It's like comparing
Outlook Express with Gmail or M2.

~~~
danso
Yep, that, and the cloud access. Which, OK, I guess is now part of Google
Chrome. But the tagging is a big deal...somewhere else in this thread, someone
requested that there be machine-learning-powered auto-tagging...I thought
there _was_? Because the pinboard bookmarklet frequently auto-tags articles
for me, though maybe that's based off of a union between my existing tags and
what other users have tagged that article? Anyway, it's nifty enough that it
works fine for my purposes.

Also, there's an API...which I haven't used yet, but at least gives me
assurance that I can mine/parse my bookmarks (which are at 1200+) in any way I
please...but the default service has been good enough so far in organizing my
info.

------
tptacek
Pinboard is so great. I've bookmarked dozens and dozens of PDF crypto papers,
and Pinboard does full-text search across them (and everything else I've
bookmarked); I can type "pin subgroup" in my browser bar and poof! I have the
paper I was trying to remember that breaks down the known attacks on GCM. To
me, it's not "bookmarking" so much as "personal search".

Also, I would pay 2x if it generated more published back-and-forth with the
current owners of Delicious.

~~~
rikkus
What do you use to get the 'pin' feature in your browser bar?

~~~
jarek
I'd guess a basic custom search defined to go to
[https://pinboard.in/search/u:[username]?query=%s](https://pinboard.in/search/u:\[username\]?query=%s)

~~~
jaf656s
Don't forget &fulltext=on if you want full text searching as tptacek
described.

------
pixelmonkey
Great essay and reflection, full of some funny nuggets:

"My strategy of pre-emptively antagonizing anyone who might possibly have an
interest in acquiring or funding the site has worked wonderfully."

"I enjoy the looking-glass aspect of our industry, where running a mildly
profitable small business makes me a crazy maverick not afraid to break all
the rules."

------
trendyy
When I first read Maciej's tweets and blogs early on I thought he was a
cynical arsehole.

As time went on I realised the tech industry could use a few more cynical
arseholes.

------
oskarth
I really like Pinboard, and I used to use it a lot but for some reason I
stopped. I'd like to start using it again. There's a big elephant in my
library though: thousands of chrome bookmarks, uncategorized ("I like this!"
_ctrl-D_ ).

Is it possible to import all my Chrome bookmarks and have them auto-tagged
based on popular tags?

Even if full coverage isn't possible, partial would be great. For example, I
have hundreds of books bookmarked, all of them on Amazon (books). Similar with
imdb (movies), .pdfs (papers), youtube (videos), etc.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
This write up[1] really helped me see the value in Pinboard, and I just
decided to jump right into it. I've been much happier using it over Firefox
built-in bookmarking tool, and find it 300x better than relying on Evernote.
Even with the webclipper getting to and finding clipped items in Evernote was
a painfully slow process.

On my desktop I have this[2] Alfred.app workflow installed which makes getting
to the bookmarks even easier, and faster, than clicking on in the bar.

1\. [http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-
guide/](http://shawnblanc.net/2013/09/pinboard-guide/) 2\.
[http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-
versio...](http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/4426-alfred-pinboard-
version-222-updated/?hl=pinboard)

------
mcherm
> So the biggest risk in a project like this remains burnout.

Actually, my biggest concern is a continuity plan. What happens to Pinboard
(and my data) if Maciej gets "hit by a bus"?

~~~
idlewords
I would worry more about trips to Yemen, personally.

~~~
kryptiskt
I'm sure that the armed escort comes courtesy of Pinboard users in the Yemeni
government.

------
bravura
I love pinboard. Can I make a feature suggestion? (Is maciej active on HN
these days?)

I'm sick of giving things tags. I imagine some users like to tag things and
some, like me, don't want to.

Can you create an autotag mode? You can mix a) predictions based upon the body
text, and b) manual tags from users not in lazy mode. You could allow users to
drop bad autotags for a particular URL.

~~~
a3n
The firefox addon does something very close to this. When you save a bookmark,
a window pops up, with all the necessaries, and a text field for notes, and a
tag field that you can type in. There are usually suggested tags below that,
which you can use by clicking them; I think the suggestions come partly from
tags you already have, and partly from the target content.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard-
exte...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard-extension/)

~~~
jarek
The suggested tags also appear when you use the popup bookmarklet from
[https://pinboard.in/howto/](https://pinboard.in/howto/)

~~~
bravura
I have used both of those.

At the bare minimum, I want them to automatically use the suggested tags, so I
can bookmark things with a _single_ click.

------
Numberwang
I just signed up based on the positive feedback from this post. I must say I
really like it. Would love for him to include a title suggestion feature
similar to the one on Reddit, but other than that the site is more or less
perfect.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I have been using pinboard for years. It's the _only_ service that immediately
comes to mind that I appreciate more every year.

I think part of that is because, "On the design level, it means not futzing
with stuff unnecessarily, except for bug fixes and basic improvements."

So much of my job involves dealing with the fallout of technological churn;
pinboard is my calm oasis by comparison.

~~~
Numberwang
This is inspiring. Out of curiosity, do you use/how do you work with the note
function?

~~~
thaumaturgy
Huh. Embarrassingly, I didn't even know it existed.

I played with it for a moment and I don't know. I've already got a system for
saving bits of text and notes and things that works for me -- pinboard might
not be better than that.

------
bambax
> _the site makes roughly the same amount of money (around $200K) every year_

Where does the money come from? Between 2013 and 2014 the site apparently
gained just 1K customers, and only new customers pay (around $10) so that
would mean $10k of revenue from new users.

I understand there's an option to pay more to "archive" stuff, but does that
bring an additional $190k of revenue??

(Disclaimer: I'm a happy user of Pinboard. I don't "love" it but I use it
regularly).

~~~
opafritz
The site has 24k active users. Do you think it's impossible that 7.6k of them
have the archive option of $25/year enabled? I have no reason to doubt this,
archive feature is great and supports the service.

~~~
bambax
A third is a lot, yes, but not impossible, no.

~~~
opafritz
I would say that people who sign up for Pinboard (+ pay ~$10) are much more
likely to support a service that they like and rely on. Otherwise they
would've chosen a free service like Diigo or Delicious to begin with.

English is not my first language, so I'm not sure. Does "makes $200K every
year" mean net profit or just the income from which hosting still has to be
subtracted from? If it's the latter, that means a lot more people are paying
for archive.

~~~
jarek
The $200k is the income (revenue). Monthly expenses have been published in the
past, most recently (AFAIK) for 2012:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au7yiR802qQmdDJ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au7yiR802qQmdDJuZEJoX3AyVks0OHRCMDMydnFIN0E#gid=0)

~~~
SuperKlaus
He even has health insurance!

------
clarky07
I love reading about pinboard and it's success. it's the epitome of a business
that does something small that solves a pain point and does it well. Now, it's
not a huge pain point, so it's never going to be a billion dollar business (i
don't think) but it shows that people will indeed still pay for software when
you make their lives a little bit better.

------
fmavituna
What's the best way to use pinboard? Do you use bookmarklet or an extension?

I tried the extension and the bookmarklet on their website but both have
really sub-part experience in many levels. Are there any alternative and
better ways to utilize pinboard?

~~~
seriocomic
That's the great thing - it doesn't force you into any particular 'way'.

Me personally - I use pinboard to 'bookmark' things I want to buy, I use
Pocket for things I want to read, and I used Feedly for the river.

How you mix that up is, and should be, up to you...

~~~
fmavituna
I like the way you look at the things, very positive. The way I see, its
experience is rubbish I can't even use it effectively :) All I want is to
bookmark stuff and then go back and find them. Isn't that supposed to be core
feature of a bookmarking website, what's it good for if the flow for that is
simply bad, unpolished?

------
fisher-lebo
Why did social bookmarking die? I say this in the sense that obviously
Pinboard shows it is still around, but the hype and velocity that was in the
space a few years back is gone.

Hacker News, Reddit, and bookmarks in your browser don't do the same thing.
The former two because links you submit to them are not considered "yours" in
the same way del.icio.us and Pinboard, and browser bookmarks because they are
not social in the same way.

I guess Twitter does the same thing for a lot of people but it isn't as
focused and it doesn't feel the same to me.

Does anyone else have any thoughts? Is social bookmarking forever relegated to
a niche market or...?

~~~
vegashacker
Pinterest is social bookmarking and is (obviously) incredibly popular.
Delicious pushed "tags" as its killer feature. But if it had dumped putting
tags front and center, and instead focused on beautiful photos of the items
bookmarked, maybe it would have taken off more.

~~~
firebones
I've already up voted you, but have to praise this insight. Folksonomy is a
wonderful navigation and subscription method for the early adopters, but I
still hear my wife telling my son to "search for a recipe you like on
Pinterest". It's perhaps the Yahoo! vs. Google aesthetic in the sense that
Delicious appealed to curators who were comfortable navigating by concepts,
while the rest of the world just wants to find a like-minded, curated world
that they can navigate by search.

------
wowtip
I really like the idea and the philosophy behind this site.

What bothers me and keeps me from using it is the fact that it seems to be a
one man show.

I could really use this, but my bookmarks have too much time invested to be
put on a service I cannot trust completely to stay around.

What would happen to the bookmark collection if main dev is hit by a bus
(heaven forbid) or just lose interest? Could not find anything on this in FAQ.

TOS mentions "If the site ceases operation, you will receive an opportunity to
download your stored data in a format suitable for import into other
bookmarking services."

But the concept seems well thought out, can a current user confirm my worries
are unfounded?

~~~
david_shaw
Well, first off, being a larger operation certainly doesn't prevent shutdown.
Although it may add some peace of mind, there's a risk in trusting _any_
third-party service provider.

Secondly, you can easily make use of the API to backup your bookmarks [1]. A
simple cronjob can make a daily repo of everything, just in case.

I've been using Pinboard for about two years now, and I love it. It's simple,
easy to use, and does what I want--and nothing more.

1: [https://pinboard.in/api/](https://pinboard.in/api/)

~~~
drifkin
Exactly, Pinboard has a pretty good API, so you can handle the backups
yourself without too much trouble.

I came across a post [1] with a backup script. It refers to another link [2]
that shows you can just use a simple curl and get all of your data.

[1] [http://alexwlchan.net/2013/03/pinboard-
backups/](http://alexwlchan.net/2013/03/pinboard-backups/)

[2] [http://supersoju.com/blog/2013/04/01/pinboard-backups-
in-1-l...](http://supersoju.com/blog/2013/04/01/pinboard-backups-in-1-line/)

~~~
wowtip
Thanks guys, that makes sense. The 1 line curl backup looks nifty.

Going to look into this a bit more. Should improve on my current local
bookmarks + external backup setup, without involving Google or any other data
mining cloud service.

------
kmfrk
Speaking of, it looks like pg or whoever finally unbanned Maciej from HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords).

~~~
idlewords
I was hellbanned for a few days, then tptacek interceded and got me unbanned.
Paul Graham was kind of squirrely about it, so I thought it was a good time to
leave.

I have met the new HN management and have no beef with the site. I only avoid
it now because it's a big potential time sink.

~~~
tptacek
gooble gobble, gooble gobble...

------
joelcarranza
Shameless plug: my pinboard iOS app Pinswift is on sale today for a dollar
(down from 5) to celebrate Pinboard's birthday. If you are a Pinboard fan, or
are just getting started, please consider trying out the app.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinswift-fast-powerful-
pinbo...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinswift-fast-powerful-
pinboard/id766741240?ls=1&mt=8)

~~~
ehurrell
I just signed up to Pinboard and got your app to help use it on iOS. Initial
impressions are good, I like it a lot, but if I could make one feature request
I would love to have another way to add bookmarks. If there was a big plus
button I could hit in the top left that brought up the 'add bookmark' screen
it'd be helpful. I already accidentally dismissed the 'do you want to add the
clipboard's link', and I frequently copy full tweets with links I'd like to
save (as link + description), (EDIT: these don't trigger the 'link in buffer'
prompt). This might also be helpful for pinboard's linkless notes? Anyway,
thanks for the great app :)

------
edsu
How about we put a human face on pinboard users and tweet our stats (# of
bookmarks, total storage, url) from our profile pages using the #pinboard5
tag? So for example something like:
[https://twitter.com/edsu/status/487193412631003137](https://twitter.com/edsu/status/487193412631003137)

~~~
mcherm
Sure! I've got 11,481 bookmarks, nearly all (except those tagged
"personal_net") with descriptive notes. It's a wonderful service.

And yes, I'm a paying customer. Not so much because I need the full-text
search, but because I want the site to be profitable.
([https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/))

------
vardhanw
I use diigo with almost all the benefits I could gather for pinboard from this
thread - tagging, annotation, cloudsync, light, extensions, read later etc.
And it is free. Am I missing something? I have thousands of bookmarks,
searchable, easy access, one click bookmarking, etc. Is there an advantage to
switch?

------
rabino
Maciej, if you are reading this... can you implement some kind of optional
recurring charge? I _want_ to pay you at least every year. I feel I'm stealing
from you.

No, I don't want to pay for archives. It's not a service I find useful for me.

~~~
simonw
If you want an optional yearly recurring charge, why not pay for the archiving
feature and think if it as a $25/year donation?

~~~
idlewords
Yeah, exactly, just upgrade. And thanks for the kind words!

------
consta
The blog post states that Pinboard makes around $200k a year but they charge
only a one-time fee of $10. Does that mean they get 20k signups each year?
Does Pinboard display ads or is there another business model behind it?

~~~
jcrites
Pinboard supports archiving and text searching the content of your links for
$25 per year.

~~~
rikkus
I didn't even know this, and I 'bought' it really early on. Thanks for letting
me know - I've now signed up for the extra service!

------
zetx
Pinboard is indeed wonderful. What I find lacking is a replacement for the old
Delicious Firefox extension which included a way to use [Delicious] bookmarked
custom searches in the browser.

------
sideproject
Awesome. Always enjoy reading your thoughts on your Pinboard. But I was always
curious on how to correctly pronounce your name. :)

~~~
octref
[http://idlewords.com/about.htm](http://idlewords.com/about.htm)

 _My name is pronounced "MAH-tchay". It's an archaic Polish form of
"Matthew"._

------
john2x
Love pinboard and love the pricing scheme.

I wonder how much work goes into maintaining the site? I'm guessing this is
his full-time job?

------
yuhong
OT, but nowadays delicious is owned by Science Inc. I wonder how well it is
doing comparing to the AVOS days.

------
waiterZen
It's awesome

------
PeterGriffin
A bit of a lost opportunity, because I've barely heard about Pinboard, and the
fact of them celebrating the passage of time since they were found, is
extremely trivial. BTW, MySpace recently turned eleven.

When writing posts and news, typically you want the headline to focus on a new
feature, a new app, or if it'll be a number, focus on a meaningful number,
like number of users, something that could engage those who aren't engaged
right now.

Way it is, a birthday party of some company I know little about is someone
else's party, and I won't even open the article.

~~~
rfrey
_a birthday party of some company I know little about is someone else 's
party_

Most of the value I get from HN, and social websites in general, is from
people surfacing things I didn't know about.

~~~
PeterGriffin
You have totally missed the point of my post, and I guess most of those that
modded it.

EDIT: Ok this is starting to get a little weird. What's with the comical
negative overreaction to my posts. What _exactly_ did I say to warrant that?

~~~
jarek
> What exactly did I say to warrant that?

Ironically, you have missed the point of the blog post. It wasn't written to
market the service, nor to engage those who aren't engaged right now. Your
comment sounds like it was written by a marketoid or a growth hacker.

~~~
PeterGriffin
Oh I see, Pinboard is so innocent, so pure, that a honest tip about how to
reach more people who can find their service useful should be modded into the
ground.

I've tainted the Jesus of bookmarks by even implicitly suggesting in my post
that they might be writing with the intention to be read. No, I suppose their
intention is way more cosmic and godly than such low earthly concerns, how
stupid of me.

Aight, aight. I never stop learning when I'm here on HN.

~~~
idlewords
Your advice on how to write more persuasively got downmodded into oblivion,
and you believe that most people here missed the point of your post (which was
about effective communication).

What does this tell you?

------
a3n
Huzzah!

