Intraspirit

Several months ago, I stumbled across what I thought to be a huge breath of fresh air in the world of bookmarks: Bookmarks2. I thought to myself, "Bookmarks I can sync between machines without complex forms and social crap? Count me in!". I used it extensively over that period of time—bookmarking everything I came across for further reading. All was well.

…Until about 4 weeks ago when Bookmarks2 suddenly went down. The website said they would be down for about two days and would be back online soon. Days turned to weeks. So I decided to send them an email asking what was going on. Last week, I finally received a reply, but not the one I was expecting:

Hi, we apologize that the website has not worked for three weeks. Unfortunately, the failure has taken place in our database. We know it is not acceptable, however we can do nothing. We took all measures so that these kinds of problems will not appear again. We hope for your understanding.

P.S. If you wish to continue working with the website you will need to register again.

Best Regards, Bookmarks2 team

My favorite part of this response is the hasty post scriptum of having to register again—as if "Oh, by the way, we did indeed lose everything!" It doesn't look like I am the only one who received this either. What's more surprising to me though is that, since the site has come back online, I see no trace of an explanation or apology on the website itself. It's one thing to lose everyone's data, but it's even more screwed up to pretend like it never happened.

Pinboard

I've since moved on; registering an account with Pinboard. I had to pay about $3 to register (a price derived from the number of total users on the website), but I believe it to be worth it, because:

1. I'm a paying customer.
2. They give a damn about my data; as evidenced by their Terms of Service:

Your bookmarks will be backed up nightly to an off-site datacenter.

If there is a significant outage, you will receive a full explanation of the circumstances and what measures will be taken to prevent a recurrence.

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.

So, if you too have been burned by Bookmarks2's incompetence, head over to Pinboard and grab an account.