Perth, Western Australia based Buzka is a social bookmarking site with a business function.
I caught up with Buzka team earlier this week and the first thing they said to me was Buzka was like De.licio.us. Whilst I felt like groaning, I soon discovered that whilst sharing features typical of the social bookmarking crowd, Buzka offers something different.
Buzka comes with the usual trimmings. Sites can be bookmarked using a Firefox or Internet Explorer plugin, and bookmarks can be made public or private.
The way bookmarks are presented though is a notable point of difference. Users are able to create “spots” which look like a directory tree. Folder style groupings can be created and labeled to suite. Bookmarks can be dragged and dropped under each labeled folder.
Where as most social bookmarking pages display external sites in a new window or in place of the original bookmark list, sites bookmarked in Buzka are displayed in a right hand frame, with the original bookmark list staying open in a left panel.
Buzka has a business function. The company already has a number of co-branding deals that allow businesses to easily bookmark and share sites that may be of interest to their readers. West and Radiestates use the frame based “spots” complete with corporate branding. A non-branded version is available at no cost.
It’s difficult to promote any product from the geographic isolation of Western Australia, let alone a service looking to compete in social bookmarking. And yet isolation can promote creative thinking. Innovative Web 2.0 startups Scouta, Perthnorg and Minti all hail from the State and now Buzka can be added to that list.
When I see “… social bookmarking…” I typically think “oh man, another social bookmarking service that is a million years late to the show”.
del.icio.us is …. 5 years old? Simpy just celebrated its 3rd birthday a few weeks ago. For more, see a nice post by Philipp Keller at http://www.pui.ch/phred/archiv.....ycles.html
I’ll go from Buzka, but from yoru description of the sidebar with drag/drop bookmarks and the site opening in the main window of the browser, this does not sound any different than a Simpy + Smarky combination (Smarky is a great Firefox extension that keeps your bookmarks in FF in sync with Simpy, offers drag and drop and tag-based folder hierarchies, good search, and a TON more). So, I’m not sure this is a lot better/different. I’ll go check out the service now.
I’d with the abobe comment.. yet another social service.. in my opinion they are too late..
Mike - Check out iyoype they have had the right side panel browsing out where Buzka and we are coming out with some cool features in the next month that will enhance the user experience in browsing even further. Also note zero downloads is our Mantra.
VM, you have to be kidding. There is a method for submission here for a company to be considered for coverage. If you want native english users….learn english, quit ripping-off tag lines from well known US companies, and provide something useful. Specifically, get rid of:
“iYOYPE - We’ll take you there.”
“It`s EASY, it`s FAST, and it`s FREE!!!!!”
bdb - I can speak better engllish than you
but was in a rush and did not read what I was writing, anyway which company do you think the tag lines are from?
Also we are not trying to get reviewed right now as we are not quite ready just wanted to comment on what Mike liked is something that iyoype already offers so take a chill pill buddy…
The Delicious firefox plugin lets you view your BM’s in a side panel view.
Did I miss something?
Great to see another local company doing well - Perth has a pretty good history of inovation. There are a number of web business (1.0 and 2.0) that have hailed from Perth.
Seems that being the most isolated city in the world is good for creative thinking!
(Disclaimer: I work for http://www.ineedhits.com, which is owned by Clay and Rachel Cook, who are some of the founders of Minti)
Hi guys,
I’m one of the developers on Buzka, just though I’d point out that Buzka isn’t just about buziness…. ummm business, we also like to have fun:
http://gerry.buzka.com/Interesting (incredible net videos and stuff)
http://gerry.buzka.com/Convulsive_Laughter (hilarious net videos and stuff)
http://gerry.buzka.com/The_Alba (the hottest Jessica alba images and videos)
Hi everyone,
A unique difference between Buzka and existing social bookmarking services is that we use a hierarchical organization model. Not only are links “tagged” within a Spot, they are also ranked in importance by a user and given a specific context. This becomes especially useful when you want to construct, share and present more complex structures of information.
This, combined with our frame-based presentation method enables many creative (personal and business) applications to be created beyond organization of links which is what most services do today. With Buzka, you can use Google docs to publish pages, share your photos on Flickr, upload videos to YouTube, and then organize and share all of this content in a very user-friendly way.
And here’s a Spot from me:
http://jinnan.buzka.com/Cute_Cats
Cheers,
Jinnan (Technical Director)
As a guy that grew up in Perth, its great to see some Sandgroper companies getting coverage in TC. I felt like I had to move to the US to pursue a career in technology (I’m a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners now) but that was back in ‘96 - its great to see that times have changed!