Foxmarks reveals its true nature–next-generation search

Having fallen out of the Firefox crowd for a bit, I missed Foxmarks coming onto the scene.  When I came back into the fold, for now, I didn’t really see the point.  I don’t really surf between several machines.  Well, seems that the real reason behind Foxmarks wasn’t just bookmark synchronization–it was building an index of websites:

The Foxmarks search engine is based entirely on user bookmarks and the associated metadata. Don?t expect pages and pages of results like you get with Google. But you will get a few results for most queries that are highly relevant and on target. When returning and ranking results, Foxmarks takes into consideration the text in the title of the URL, the names of any folders people have put the bookmarks in, and any descriptions added by users. All of this information is shown in the results. See the very hazy screen shot below for the current user interface, which Kapor says will change before launch. Source: Mitch Kapor?s Foxmarks To Leap Into Search World

So take the bookmarks of thousand’s of people, see how they are organized and “tagged” (in the most general sense) and use that to build something to be queried against.  Sounds cool to me.  I just downloaded, installed, and configured it.  Pretty painless, but … But, are people still bookmarking websites often?  I don’t.  Most of the sites I visit often are via RSS, no need to for bookmarks.  I might had a new bookmark once a month.  So will the Foxmark search engine continue to be popular?  Will it grow?  Well I’m happy to contribute my data to the folder.  So, if you’re looking for the online flyer for Thrifty’s or Country Grocer (two supermarkets up here), I helped you with that.