The Next Web

Library service SecondBrain adds Friendfeed and Facebook

Written on August 8, 2008 – 2:00 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Norwegian start-up SecondBrain, currently in second beta phase, has welcomed its 10,000th user. In the ideal situation, every user would build its own collections and libraries of content. Not sure if they’re all doing that but I did write a positive review about the service in June. I was charmed by SecondBrain because it collects all your online content in a safe and well-designed place. All it takes is entering your credentials to various services once, and then SecondBrain automatically syncs all your blog posts, bookmarks, Google Docs, Flickr pics, and whatnot every time you log in.

So the service is doing ok, 10,000 users is not bad at all, but the most interesting news that SecondBrain has released lately is that they’ve added integration with ten more services (including FriendFeed, Facebook, (!) Diigo, Reddit, Mixx, Tumblr, Qik, Goodreads and Behance). Especially due to the FriendFeed and Facebook integration, SecondBrain becomes a solid archiving tool for all your online activity.

In general, online content is something that disappears with time. Twitter tweets, messages on Facebook walls, and a Qik video are things you might stumble on accidentally after a while. But they’re not properly archived. SecondBrain does store all this content in one place, which is also easy searchable. For me, that’s the added value of SecondBrain: it’s my online library. Like founder Lars Teigen said in a comment on my last post about SecondBrain:

We are definitely going for the organizers and collectors out there and want to be a service where you can build your own personal content library, with all the good content that you collect over time from the various services that you use, and help you organize it, search in it, and share [..]

But what if SecondBrain goes bankrupt?

The only touchy issue is trust. What if SecondBrain ceases to exist? Bankruptcy, crashed servers, you name it. Then my whole library will be gone. I trust them for now, especially since my life doesn’t depend on it. Yet I’m sure not everybody is as light-hearted as I am. So here’s your challenge, Mr. Teigen, convince your potentials users that your service is trustworthy.

I hope you like that post!

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aggregating, Lars Teigen, library, secondbrain

9 Comments »

SecondBrain, definitely worth a second look

Written on June 23, 2008 – 12:11 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

During the past few months, I’ve seen a specific start-up keep popping up: SecondBrain. It promised me to aggregate all my content in order to organize life 2.0. “Yeah yeah”, I thought, “Seen it, been there, done that - never worked for me”. So my attention went to one of the other twenty start-ups that are brought under my attention on a daily basis.

But last week, I received an invite from another blogger and Boris sent me a press release about the beta 2 launch of SecondBrain. So I decided to give SecondBrain a second chance (quite a corny line, uh?). Turns out that I might actually use this service. Why? Well, it does a really good job synchronizing the majority of the Web 2.0 services - from Flickr to Digg and from Wordpress to Google Docs - ALL your content in stored in one huge media library. For some reason, this gives me a safe feeling. I have it all stored in one place, like a giant bookcase with my photo albums, video tapes, books, articles, and lots of uh.. bookmarks.

Apart from the safe feeling, in the end - that’s just personal, there are more advantages, particularly in the field of organizing:

• SecondBrain generates one tag cloud for all your online stuff.
• You can create collections, regardless of file types. This is easy for reference.
• There’s a rather solid search engine.

Founder Lars Teigen has told Mashable that SecondBrain focuses on organizing your content first, after that, they’ll add the unavoidable social layers. The new features of Beta 2 prove his point: the navigation has improved, you now have 1GB for personal file uploads and, ok, there’s a share function.

Personally, I don’t need a social touch to SecondBrain. For that purpose, I use the services with which SB is synchronizing. I just want to look up all my saved content about my favorite band, hobby, or travel destination - just like a real bookshelf.

aggregation, library, organize, secondbrain, share

3 Comments »