Del.icio.us vs Ma.gnolia

Del.icio.us

I began searching del.icio.us only a few weeks ago when I first saw it mentioned in class. However, I am new to social bookmarking, and this is my first account with the service. I found the homepage to be a bit busy and would imagine might be overwhelming for a novice. Although, I believe those experienced with social software would have no problem navigating the site.

Side note: Last week I came across a neat firefox addin I discussed in a previous blog that also has del.cio.us as in item on a toolbar menu and is worth checking out.

Pro's

• Easy navigation (both have top navigation bar)
• Ability to easily add buttons to browser toolbars for easy bookmarking
  

Con's

• Homepage is a bit cluttered and busy
• The layout of the help area could be more user friendly and better organized
  

Ma.gnolia

I initially encountered a problem when attempting to create an account with ma.gnolia using the mozilla firefox browser (version 5.0). The sign in page webpage would not properly load after an itemed was selected from the drop down. I am not sure if this was due to a setting that may need to be changed on my end, but as a new user I didn't get a great first impression of the service as I was quite frustrated when a simple refresh wouldn't due the trick. Being that my firefox browser was having issues I switched it IE., and found the drop down field to be successfully working :)

Once I was finally logged in I found the homepage to be quite streamlined. As I am sure many of my class mates have mentioned, it definitely has an appealing look to the interface design. The site was also very user friendly making it easy to add bookmarks, tags, and to navigate the site.

Pro's

• Appealing interface and very user friendly
• Offers help for beginner users as well as a abridged version for users with experience in social bookmarking.
• Easy navigation (both have top navigation bar)

Con's

• Interface glitches with mozilla firefox
• Offers "bookmarklet" feature which allows a user to add a button to the toolbar, however the setup is not user friendly as I was unable to successfully install it.