10 Years

That's how long (at the very least) I want to run Saved.io for.

When I started the app a few months ago, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I knew I would use it everyday, but I didn't know if others would.

But they did. Not a huge number - around 9k at the moment, and I'm content with this number. I know a lot of people find it to be a useful tool - I put up a donation button and I do receive regular donations which are hugely appreciated. To me these donations are the ultimate indicator that a product is useful.

One of the most common emails I receive, are people wanting to confirm I'm committed to keep saved.io alive. These emails led me to do a lot of thinking, and I became certain that I wanted to keep this product online for years and years to come. Not sell it off. Not let it die.

Delicious came. It disappeared, and then came back again. I would put money on it dying or pivoting in the next 2 years. Google reader, which many people used as a sort of bookmarking app, also went. Today also marks the day that yahoo bookmarks closes down (I bet you didn't even knew it existed). And pretty much all the Social bookmarking sites have gone. This is just shitty for the user. Bookmarks are something that should stick around.

I know that in 10 years time, I will love to look back through my saved.io stream and see what I was browsing and what I was bookmarking as worthy to read. I do the same now with my files, and emails. It's fun to look back.

It's fun to imagine what others services would have been like if they were still around today. So many apps seem to get sold off or closed down before they even figure out what they are doing. If they don't have explosive viral growth they get the chop.

It does make financial sense to keep a project going too. I've regretted letting go of some of the apps I had built before. Just having an aged domain is valuable.

So I'm going to keep saved.io going. I know a lot of things will change in 10 years, and perhaps it is foolish to think like this. But it's worth the attempt. I much prefer to build a product slowly and steadily over many years. Taking time to design each new feature and not just churn them out and seeing what sticks and what misses. Saved.io doesn't take very much work. It is a side project so I can both handle the financial (which are currently nil as it shares a server with this blog) and the time costs. But I will explore options to build income (not from ads).

I'm also going to make sure that getting your bookmarks in and out of Saved.io is as easy as possible. And make some available some backup options such as saving a copy of your bookmarks to dropbox etc. I think this is important to making sure a service survives. A user's data belongs to the user, and a service provider should make it easy for them to come and go.

A final thought. If the rumours are true, Google, will be launching a bookmarking service for their Chrome browser called Google Stars. One thing i'm certain of, Google Stars won't be around in 10 years. Saved.io will.

So here's to building something slowly and steadily over many years. Not knocking down the foundations and pivoting just for the sake of a buzz word. Here's to 10 years.