dekstop: weblog

del.icio.us apparently has just added a feature that I've been wanting for a long time: It's now very easy to see the history of bookmarks for a specific URL without having to bookmark it yourself. Here's an example of such a bookmark history page: del.icio.us bookmarks for mailfeed.org.

I regularly check these URL bookmark histories on del.icio.us, because it can answer all kinds of interesting questions, e.g.: How popular is this URL? Since when have people known about this? Who bookmarked this URL first? What are their comments?

I imagine this caters to a small audience, but it's a feature that I'll be using frequently. Here's a simple bookmarklet:

this URL on del.icio.us

And this is really an improvement over the old version. Up until now you needed to do this:

• Visit the URL you're interested in.
• Bookmark the URL, if you haven't already done so.
• Go to your del.icio.us profile page.
• Locate the URL's bookmark (which might involve a search if you bookmarked it long ago).
• Click on "and x other people" to get to the URL's bookmark history.

And it just became as easy as:

• Visit the URL you're interested in.
• Click on the bookmarklet.

*Sigh*

However...

There is a drawback to this new version of the bookmark history page though. The old version used to list all bookmarks for a URL, including the date, title, description and tags for each individual user -- and all we get now is a summary page, with a tag cloud for this bookmark, the user names, and some user descriptions.

This step understandable when you know Joshua Schachter's oft-repeated caution of making del.icio.us' database too accessible for scrapers. After all, now it's really easy to convert a URL to a hash, and hashes are gateways to del.icio.us metadata.

And it's probably an improvement in usability. We don't have to scan a (potentially long) list, but get presented the executive summary, so to speak.

But my original reason for wanting this feature has suddenly vanished: The history page is not fun any more if you want to do your own data analysis. E.g. you can't easily plot popularity graphs of a URL over time, because del.icio.us won't give you the necessary data any more, or at least not in the detailed, easily parse-able way it used to.

del.icio.us is now doing the analysis for you; tough luck if you're interested in an aspect they decided not to reveal.

Update: 2006-03-16 -- Jon Udell shares the irritation, and has a great example of the kind of custom data analysis that the updated history now prevents.

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