TokyoGraph Link to close
First things first: I’m probably going to shut down TokyoGraph Link in the very near future. For those who don’t know, it’s the experimental social bookmarking site I launched a few months ago. So why is it closing? Well, I found out through What Japan Thinks that there’s another Japan-related bookmarking site called JapanSoc, which you should all check out.
The site runs on the Pligg content management software, which I didn’t know about before, or else I would’ve used it instead of trying to build something from scratch. This means that JapanSoc has a lot of functionality that I haven’t had time to implement yet. And the site is better connected to all the J-bloggers out there. Overall, it makes more sense to scrap the broken site here and support the one that has already tapped into the community somewhat. There are also some neat tools like a bookmarklet and a FeedFlare to make things easier for both sharers and publishers.
I’ll be keeping TokyoGraph Link up until I can code a replacement feed for the Tokyograph front page (hopefully this weekend). I recommend signing up for JapanSoc already!
January 9th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Should I apologise for this? It wasn’t planned - I found out I could do the FeedFlare easily for JapanSoc, but not for TokyoGraph Link and did it all off my own bat without contacting either of the owners before hand.
I suppose it’s a good thing that the Japan English blogosphere has just one social bookmarking service, but I’m sorry that I was in some way responsible for your site’s death.
January 9th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Let me raise my hand and apologize for my part in this. If I had known you were working on a social bookmarking site, I would have thought twice about starting JapanSoc. But you’ve still got a lot of great content, it’s just the Links section you’re closing, right?
January 9th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Whoa, no need to apologize at all! It’s just the Links section that’s closing, and I have no qualms about it. There’s a lot of stuff missing from Tokyograph Link that I never got around to coding in, and I realize I’d rather focus my efforts on improving other parts of the site. Now that I know about Pligg, I feel like it would be a waste of time for me to continue trying to build a bookmarking site from scratch.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty much the only one who adds links to the bookmarking site here. Like you pointed out, Ken, I really don’t think there’s a good reason to have two competing sites for the Japan niche, so I’d prefer to support the one that already has some connection to the bloggers out there (and is more functional). My whole motivation for creating Tokyograph Link was because I didn’t see one out there already, and now that there is one, I’m happy.
Don’t worry, Tokyograph (the news, articles, and other stuff) is still going to be around. The Links section was neat, but not a big deal.