TechCrunch » Ma.gnolia http://www.techcrunch.com Startup and Technology News Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:56:16 +0000 en hourly 1 Interview: A Conversation With Founder Larry Halff About the Relaunch of Ma.gnolia http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/21/interview-a-conversation-with-founder-larry-halff-about-the-relaunch-of-ma-gnolia/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/21/interview-a-conversation-with-founder-larry-halff-about-the-relaunch-of-ma-gnolia/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:21:49 +0000 Guest Author http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=103782 Many of you may remember Ma.gnolia—the nifty social bookmarking tool that unfortunately imploded at the beginning of this year. Founded by Larry Halff almost 4 years ago, the site had a different aesthetic and attitude toward sharing information. It was one of the more community-minded tools I remember from that era, offering features like the ability to "thank" the sharer of a useful link, for example. It also possessed clean design and careful site organization. In my opinion, its take on sharing data really differentiated it. Like many great things, Ma.gnolia didn't start out to be big, but rather started out to be good—and it was. And, as is often the case with things that are good, Ma.gnolia become big by virtue of that goodness. Ironically, even though the membership of the service reached hundreds of thousands of account holders and tens of thousands of regular users, the infrastructure supporting the site was still incredibly small. It was run almost solely by Larry and the hardware and bandwidth he could support by himself. Unfortunately, there were some technical limitations to the honorable yet fragile DIY set-up running behind the scenes that ultimately led to the site's premature demise. I was really bummed to watch the VOD-cast explaining the catastrophic nature of the data loss back in February and have thought about the site often, since that time. I was able to catch up with Larry a while back and talk with him, not about what went wrong with Ma.gnolia 1.0 but rather what is in store for Ma.gnolia 2.0, if anything, and also pick his brain about the future of social bookmarking. If you were a fan of Ma.gnolia in the past, you will be happy to know that it is scheduled to relaunch September 22, by invite only. ]]> Many of you may remember Ma.gnolia—the nifty social bookmarking tool that unfortunately imploded at the beginning of this year. Founded by Larry Halff almost 4 years ago, the site had a different aesthetic and attitude toward sharing information. It was one of the more community-minded tools I remember from that era, offering features like the ability to "thank" the sharer of a useful link, for example. It also possessed clean design and careful site organization. In my opinion, its take on sharing data really differentiated it. Like many great things, Ma.gnolia didn't start out to be big, but rather started out to be good—and it was. And, as is often the case with things that are good, Ma.gnolia become big by virtue of that goodness. Ironically, even though the membership of the service reached hundreds of thousands of account holders and tens of thousands of regular users, the infrastructure supporting the site was still incredibly small. It was run almost solely by Larry and the hardware and bandwidth he could support by himself. Unfortunately, there were some technical limitations to the honorable yet fragile DIY set-up running behind the scenes that ultimately led to the site's premature demise. I was really bummed to watch the VOD-cast explaining the catastrophic nature of the data loss back in February and have thought about the site often, since that time. I was able to catch up with Larry a while back and talk with him, not about what went wrong with Ma.gnolia 1.0 but rather what is in store for Ma.gnolia 2.0, if anything, and also pick his brain about the future of social bookmarking. If you were a fan of Ma.gnolia in the past, you will be happy to know that it is scheduled to relaunch September 22, by invite only. ]]> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/21/interview-a-conversation-with-founder-larry-halff-about-the-relaunch-of-ma-gnolia/feed/ 0 Ma.gnolia: More Social Bookmarking http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/22/magnolia-more-social-bookmarking/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/22/magnolia-more-social-bookmarking/#comments Sun, 23 Oct 2005 06:37:01 +0000 Michael Arrington http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/22/magnolia-more-social-bookmarking/ I’m looking forward to seeing what ma.gnolia is all about. It appears to be a social bookmarking service with a twist of some sort. I hope its a good twist because this space is getting a bit crowded to say the least.

Ma.gnolia describes itself as “Found is the New Search” and “Social Bookmarking to build an information community online”, adding:

What you mark in Ma.gnolia not only stays found but keeps coming back to you as your interests change. That’s our pitch, plain and simple, and it’s why we say that found is the new search.

If you’d like to be one of the first to see exactly what we mean, just enter your email below. You’ll be notified of our launch and become one of the first members of the Ma.gnolia community, where we believe you’ll discover the new evolution in growing and sharing information across town or across the globe. You may even be invited to participate in Ma.gnolia’s December 2005 Beta Launch.

They promise a beta in December 2005. I’m skeptical of companies that continue to launch with these domain name abominations (dropping vowels, using random ccTLDs and lots of extra dots), but if the service rocks, I will forgive all. Early buzz sounds promising.

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