Zootool – Visual Bookmarking

Zootool is a creative online bookmarking application that lets people collect, store, and share videos, pictures, documents, and pages from around the web. These collections are organized visually and by file type, allowing users to view and click on the specific video, photo, or document they’re looking for without having to know the URL or page title. The end result? Pictures are saved with other pictures, videos are saved with other videos, and all of a user’s collections are organized in a way that makes any link easy to find.

When you sign up for Zootool, make sure to install the application’s bookmarklet—known as a “lasso”—on whichever browser you use most often. Once you’ve got this in place, saving photos and videos with the app is easy. On photo sites like Flickr and Picassa, just click the lasso tool and the photo you’re looking at will be saved to your account. The photo will be stored within the Images section of your account—known as a “zoo”—or you can find it by using the search bar in the upper right corner. Because each Zootool user gets a custom web address, it’s easy for people to find your bookmarks if they want to check out what you’ve been looking at. Users who click on your account can browse through your favorite links until they see an image that looks interesting. Clicking on the image will take them to a separate Zooltool page, where they will need to click on the image once again to be taken to the outside site. If you’ve found any photos or videos that you’d like to share, Zootool makes that easy. Just go to your account, find the saved link, and click the Share button on the right. You can send a shortened link to all your friends, or post the bookmark on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

One thing that Zootool does especially well is to promote social networking among its users. Follow other users just as you would with Twitter, or add an individual user’s RSS feed to your Google Reader or Live Bookmarks account. In addition to giving people a way to store and share their favorite bookmarks, Zootool also offers the opportunity to promote your other online profiles and let your followers know where else to find you on the web. Zootool is an interesting application that presents bookmarked links in a creative, visually pleasing way.