Although I generally try to keep the tone of this blog positive and avoid disparagement, it's important to expose what doesn't work as well as what does. Saves you the time and trouble. With that in mind, here are 11 Web 2.0 social tagging sites to avoid.
If the owner of any of these sites cares to fix their problems and contact me, I'll be happy to post an update.
folkd.com
On my first attempt at registration, I tried five different email addresses; the service kept saying "email address already in use. Please use another or click 'password forgotten.'" There was no link to "password forgotten" on the page. My second attempt at registration went more smoothly until I reached the account activation page from their activation email, at which point I copied the activation code they had sent and got an error stating "Could not activate your account! Please insert a valid activation ticket to activate your new account." After the third attempt (again, it wouldn't accept the validation code provided), I almost gave up. I gave this one more shot a week later, and it told me that my selected username was already in use. Service could not be evaluated.
Jots
Attempted to register on three separate occasions; every time I clicked "Signup," I got an error message saying "Invalid action: signup."
My Bookmark Manager
Registration failed on three separate attempts. Registration page displayed this error: "Disabled - check back soon." Gave this one more shot a week later -- this time my connection repeatedly timed out when trying to access the registration page. Unable to evaluate.
Namakkal
Again, made three attempts at signing up. Unable to register -- kept getting a 403 "Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /register.php on this server." error. Not very friendly for a social tagging site!
Scuttle
A fitting name for what should be done with this site. I made three attempts at registration, but was unable to evaluate as the registration page link kept returning a 404 error page.
SiteTagger
Attempted to register on three different days. Unable to evaluate as the registration page said "Signups are disabled for the time being." each time I checked it out.
Smarking
Tried five times to register; kept getting a "500 Internal Error" message page.
Taggly
Unable to create an account; none of the links worked (login, register, about, feedback) except the link to the Taggly blog -- which is written in Italian. On my second registration attempt, I again got a "No input file specified" error when I clicked the "Register" link. Tried one more time -- three strikes, it's out.
unalog
Unable to register because "new registrations are disabled." There is also a prominent warning that this is a beta site, and therefore all passwords are passed in clear text. Until they fix this issue as well as re-enabling new registrations, avoid this site.
LinkaGoGo
Yet another site where new user registration failed: I continually got a 404 error page after filling in my account information.
Previous articles in this series:
Web 2.0 Social Tagging Sites, Part 1: Alexa Rankings
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Terms: Web 2.0 social tagging sites, the worst, what doesn't work
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