Bing Saves is a social online bookmarks manager

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 4, 2014
Updated • Jul 22, 2019
Internet
|
6

Big news today, Microsoft launched the open beta of Bing Saves, a new search experiment that adds bookmarking functionality with a social component to the company's Bing search engine.

Here is what you need to know about Bing Saves: you do need a Microsoft Account as Bing stores the information using the account.

While that is inconvenient for some, others may like the fact that this brings the bookmarks to all devices that they use provided that they can sign in to their Microsoft Account on them.

Bing Saves

save-this-for-later
A Bing search page with saves enabled

So what is social about Saves? Each bookmark that you add, each tag you use, and each comment you write is public, more or less.

Lets take a look at how it works, before we dive deeper into the social aspect.

Bing Saves offers three ways to bookmark sites

  • The first involves opening bing.com/saves to paste a web url into the form there to save it to the account.
  • The second method makes use of a bookmarklet which provides you with the means to save the active site.
  • The third and final method displays save options in the Bing results.

Please note that those seem to only appear if you are using Internet Explorer, and not other browsers. The two other methods on the other hand work fine regardless of the browser that you are using.

Each site that you add as a bookmark is displayed with a screenshot and name on the Bing Saves website. A click opens it directly, and the two other core options that you have are to add tags and comments to bookmarks.

Once you add a tag, it is shown on the right as a category that you can click on. What you need to understand is that these tags are publicly accessible, and that items in these categories are  the product of all users of Bing Saves.

When I tagged a page with the tour tag for instance, I noticed that another tour tag page was already listed there.

And when I added the frontpage of Ghacks to technology, 17 other pages were already listed there, with some abusing the system already for promotional purposes.

Comments that you place are also public which means that you need to be careful what you write as others may read it.

The manageability of saved sites is not that good because of it. Since you can only access all your sites on the frontpage and not categorize them in a way that only you have access to them, it quickly grows out of proportions and becomes unmanageable.

Update: Microsoft launched My Saves in 2016 that improved management options as you can use the new interface to manage your own saves.

Verdict

Bing Saves is an experimental feature that is currently in beta. While the adding of bookmarks and the synchronization across the Microsoft account works fine, it lacks several features that would make it usable.

First of all, there needs to be an option to save private bookmarks. While that goes against the social aspect, it is not really feasible to use Bing Saves only for bookmarks that you do not mind to share, while another bookmarking program for those that you do not want to share.

Then you need to be able to filter out public bookmarks, so that you can access only yours in the tag folders.

Last but not least, an option to get rid of public bookmarks that you believe are not appropriate for the category, or pure spam, is needed as well.

And even then, it would make sense to sync the Bing Saves bookmarks with your regular browser bookmarks. That does not seem possible right now either.

My projection is the following: if Microsoft does not improve the feature and make sure spam is under control, it will be abused by marketers left and right to place their sites prominently on Bing.

Summary
Bing Saves is a social online bookmarks manager
Article Name
Bing Saves is a social online bookmarks manager
Description
Microsoft launched Bing Saves in 2014, an online bookmarks manager for Bing Search that featured a social component.
Author
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
Logo
Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

  10. Anonymous said on September 28, 2023 at 8:19 am
    Reply

    When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?

  11. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 9:36 am
    Reply

    Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.

    I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.

    1. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 11:01 am
      Reply

      Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  12. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 10:48 am
    Reply

    Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  13. Mystique said on September 28, 2023 at 12:13 pm
    Reply

    Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
    Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.