Kippt – Straightforward Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is nothing new. After all, Delicious and Pinboard have been doing it for years. As more and more bookmarking applications continue beefing up their lists of features and capabilities, Kippt has decided to take a step back. Kippt is a bookmarking application that cares more about being effective, simple, and fast than it does being the most robust tool on the block.

If you’re interested in using a bookmarking tool that makes it easy to save links across multiple devices and browsers, then Kippt is the tool for you. Quickly sign up for a free account, and then start copy/pasting all the links you’d like to save into your Kippt Inbox. Bookmarks are divided into three main categories or lists: Inbox, Read Later, and Starred. To get even more organized, you can create your own lists. This helps to keep your favorite cooking sites and crafting sites separated within your Inbox. If you’re the kind of person who can’t remember why you saved the links you did, then you’ll want to try out Kippt’s Notes feature. Using this feature, you can add a few lines of text to remind yourself why each link was added to your account. Once you’re done saving articles, check them out in ‘Reader’ view, or share specific bookmarks with friends via Twitter, Facebook, or a shortened URL. Kippt even offers an RSS feed of each user’s inbox, which your friends can use to keep up with all the links you’re saving.

Kippt might be stripped down, but it’s hardly bare bones. The bookmarking tool offers a number of useful tools, like a Chrome extension, bookmarklets, and a “quick bookmarket” tool for people who are really in a hurry. Google Reader users will appreciate the ability to add Kippt to Google Reader’s Sent To menu, and people who frequently change their minds about which bookmarking apps they use will appreciate being able to export the links they’ve saved on Kippt in standard Netscape format.

Practical Uses:

• Save all your favorite links to refer back to later
• Keep your links synced across multiple devices
• Share interesting articles with friends who have similar taste
• Keep track of the articles you plan on reading later

Insider Tips:

• Google Chrome users can download the extension
• The bookmarklet tool lets people quickly save their favorite links
• Share specific links via Twitter or Facebook
• Saved links can be exported in standard Netscape format

What we liked:

• Kippt is a stripped down, easy-to-use bookmarking app
• The Read It Later function is a great way to organize unread news articles
• People who use Kippt don’t have to worry about tagging all their links correctly
• Kippt users can access their saved links on mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers

What we didn’t like:

• People who appreciate all the bells and whistles of apps like Delicious probably won’t like Kippt’s stripped down approach

Alternatives:

• Delicious – http://delicious.com
• Instapaper – http://www.instapaper.com
• Pinboard – http://pinboard.in

Company Info:

• Launched: October 2011 (Beta)
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Founded by: Jori Lallo and Karri Saarinen
• Web site: http://kippt.com

Costs:

• Free