Last weekend, word got out about Zeen, an upcoming magazine discovery and creation service developed by AVOS, the company formed by YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. But that’s not the only service AVOS has quietly launched recently. Some time last week, their new site, Mei.fm, surfaced.

Basically, it’s a version of the new Delicious (the social bookmarking service AVOS acquired from Yahoo about a year ago) for the Chinese.

Mei.fm, which is mentioned as a separate project on the AVOS website, is similar to services like Pinterest and Clipboard, enabling users in China to collect and share things on the Web that they find interesting.

Judging from the team page, there are 14 people working on Mei.fm already.

An AVOS representative told Tech In Asia reporter Rick Martin that Mei.fm was initially forked from Delicious and launched as a separate product in beta on April 1st. The rep added that the service looks a lot like Delicious now, but, as it is built with Chinese users in mind, will likely end up looking different from Delicious.com in the future.

Also read: Chad Hurley on the future of Delicious and YouTube’s place in the new online video landscape

By the way, Hurley will also be speaking at The Next Web Conference 2012 later this month. Boy do we have a lot to ask him now.

➤ Mei.fm

Copying and pasting is something we all do. Sometimes it’s for ourselves, but when we’re on the web we’re probably copying and pasting things to share with friends. Links, photos, and text get copied and pasted every day into emails, IM’s, Twitter, Facebook, and more.

Clipboard, a web app created by Gary Flake, previously founded Microsoft’s Live Labs, Yahoo Research, and Overture Research. It’s safe to say that Clipboard is built based on the needs of web surfers everywhere.

Instead of copying and pasting, Clipboard gives you a simple bookmarklet for your browser that will let you select a full element of a web page to save and share with whomever you like. It’s simple and seamless to do, and doesn’t feel as clunky as services who only save and share links like Delicious. You’re definitely going to want to sign up.

Here is a video from the company explaining Clipboard:

We talked with Clipboard’s founder Gary Flake about what makes Clipboard so different:

TNW: Please talk about your experience with Microsoft’s Live Labs, Yahoo Research, and Overture Research, and what you’ve learned about browser interaction on the web.

Gary Flake: In each of my three previous jobs I was hired to build teams that could create new opportunities, but outside of traditional structure and processes of the business. At Overture Research, we focused on low-level technology to help improve our overall economics (i.e., earn more money per search and per click). At Yahoo! Research, we tried to identify changes to existing products that could elicit an actual shift in the strategic landscape (e.g., make search less commercial or shift advertising to an options framework). And at Live Labs, we looked for new user experiences that could fundamentally change how people interacted with the Web (e.g., zoomable UIs).

In each case, browser interaction is absolutely fundamental to what you can and can’t do within any of these problem domains. For example, paid search works because the user’s intent in a query is a much stronger signal of intent than viewing a page. We also know that algorithmic Web search is complicated by the fact that users aren’t tolerant of having many more controls beyond a search box. Worse still, many users don’t have a clear mental model of what separates a browser from a Web page.

The most important lesson for me – and the one that is a bit humbling – is that understanding browser interaction is really, really hard. It’s hard because it touches on technology, business strategy, and user experiences, and you can’t even begin to understand the implications of these issues until you start thinking about all of these issues as different aspects of something more fundamental.

TNW: What in your experience told you that copying and pasting just wasn’t getting it done and needed innovation?

Gary Flake: The Web is over twenty years old and there is still no way to bring to together two search results from two different sources. The state-of-the-art for saving something from the Web is comically complicated: highlight content, hit CTRL/CMD-C, change into another application like an email or text editor, hit CTRL/CMD-V, hit save or send, then switch back to where you were when you started. Could this be any more complicated?

To add insult to injury, if you copy things in this way, you’ll usually end up with something that has little resemblance to the source, has lost some key functionality, and is hard to share.

What we really need is a way to save things that retains the visuals and functionality, but is also portable and shareable. The fact that nothing existed with all of these properties inspired me to create Clipboard.

TNW: Is Clipboard something that moms and dads and nongeeks are able to figure out? The worst part of sharing on the web for my parents is there are too many steps for them. Did you build this with those folks in mind?

Gary Flake: I think Clipboard can work for non-technologists and I absolutely had that sort of user in mind when I designed it. And for what it’s worth, my parents are regular Clipboard users today. The biggest hurdle has been to help people get the bookmarklet installed (what we call the “Clipper”). After that, it’s pretty easy because saving is as easy as two steps (launch then click).

We also default clips to be private instead of public because we have this sort of user in mind first and foremost.

To give you a little more context, before we came out of stealth mode, I sort of cryptically and cheekily described Clipboard as “social media with a purpose”. What I meant by that description is that a lot of services today (like social networks) work great for the tech savvy, but are leaving behind many others. With Clipboard, I am hoping to build something that appeals to those that are left behind by more typical social media. And to do that, we focused on the simplicity and utility of the experience above all else.

TNW: What other types of environments do you think Clipboard would work in, are there any mobile plans as of yet?

Gary Flake: Mobile will certainly need to be a priority for us in the not-too-distant future. We had to get the Web service solid first, but we’ll gradually start to increase the surface area of Clipboard in time.

Because copy/paste is such a ubiquitous need, I am especially interested in seeing how we can connect it not just to our own scenarios, but to those of other developers as well.

TNW: What sites do you personally clip from the most?

Gary Flake: As you can imagine, I clip a lot of stuff. For myself, I tend to clip things that I need to remember but would otherwise forget, such as the obscure technical tip form Hacker News or the Google search results that took me an hour of research to find.

My wife and I clip a lot of things that pertain to our home life, and this includes everything from shopping, stuff for the kids, ideas for activities, etc. Clipboard lets us share these clips privately, so we get something like a private workspace out of it. In truth, I think the top site that I clip from while in this mode is Amazon.

But the clips that I publish to the Clipboard feeds page are the things that I think others may like. This could be the occasional YouTube video or TED talk, but could also be something funny or weird that I saw on Reddit.

Taking a clip of a web page and sharing

When you grab a piece of a web page with Clipboard, you’re not taking a screenshot. You’re taking an actual element from a page and saving it. A perfect example is The Next Web’s Facebook page widget that you see on the right hand side of our pages.

With Clipboard, you can just click a page element, and it is saved completely intact. All links work, and all images are in place.

After you’ve clipped an element with Clipboard, you can add tags, @ mentions, and any annotation that you like. At this time you can choose to publish your clip publicly or just save it to your own Clipboard dashboard. If you make your clip public, all of the hashtags and notes become searchable and discoverable by the rest of the Clipboard community.

This is a really smart design and service with a whole host of potential usages. If you see a great flash game, you can clip it and share it without having to copy and paste a link or embed it on your own site. If you’re a designer or developer and see a lightbox that you really like, you could share that with your team instantly using Clipboard. No view source and copy and paste needed.

Your Clipboard home and browsing clips

All of the clips you’ve taken using Clipboard are stored on a very well designed dashboard that you can view in tile or list format. Once you’ve taken and saved a clip, you can add annotations, switch it from private to public and vice versa, as well as share it via Facebook, Twitter, email, or an embed on your site or blog.

If you’d like to find elements found from around the web that others have shared, Clipboard makes it simple to do by searching for things you’re interested in. The keywords that you have used on your own clips are even stored for easy clicking and searching later.

You can sign up for Clipboard here to start clipping and sharing everything you see online.

Sharing on the web is something that we all do. Be it sharing a link on Twitter or Recommending something on Facebook, it’s something we do everyday. This is great for our friends and family, as they are seeing content that they probably wouldn’t have stumbled onto themselves. But I’m going to ask the question that nobody seems to be asking.

What’s in it for us?

Asking what we’re getting out of sharing may sound selfish. In fact, getting something in return for sharing sounds downright wrong. However, with as much time that we spend on the web curating, digging, and finding great content to share with others, we actually deserve something significant in return.

But what?

Yes, we’re getting to meet new people and keep in contact with people that we care about, and that’s very important. I’m asking a very different question though. When we share something on the web, we don’t think about the effect that it has on others. Sure, someone can retweet us, favorite our post, or like something, but that doesn’t really give us the feedback we need when we’re putting in the time to say “Hey, this is cool!”. I’m not going to focus on whether we’ll get paid for sharing, because that’s a whole different topic. I personally worry about what I’ll be able to get out of the content that I’ve shared five or ten years from now. How about when I have kids? Will I be able to show them exactly what I was checking out on November 7th, 2007? It’s not looking so bright for that so far.

I’m going to discuss how the most popular services are going about giving us something back for what we’re putting into it. Or more specifically, how these services are going about personal aggregation and analytics.

Facebook

Facebook just made the first big step in personal aggregation with its Timeline feature. It’s not publicly available yet, but it’s going to change the way we use Facebook completely. When I visit your profile, I could view things that you posted in 2008. That may sound like stalking, but really what it does is let me see how you and your tastes have evolved over the years. For example, you may have listened to a lot of Dave Matthews Band in 2008, but now you’re more of a John Mayer fan. Until Timeline, you’d have to click a “more” button over and over to go through someone’s Wall posts on Facebook. What a bad experience.

For me personally, this type of aggregation is exciting. I am really excited to remember the places I’ve been and the things that I said in the context of months and years. That’s really what Facebook was missing before Timeline, the context. A lot of other services are missing that too.

Twitter

Twitter is probably my favorite service to use. I have tweeted some of the most important milestones and moments of my life. I was using Twitter before it launched, and certainly before it went mainstream. Can I search for those tweets? No. That to me is nearly data robbery. I feel like I’ve put so much effort into Twitter for myself and for others, yet I can’t reference any of it. Twitter search only makes the last 5-7 days worth of tweets available. I can however go through my tweets by infinitely scrolling through them. Like Facebook’s wall before Timeline, that is a horrible user experience.

Twitter tells me who my followers are, who I follow, and how many times I’ve tweeted, yet leaves out all other context about what’s most important…the actual tweets. Sure, I can favorite tweets, including my own, but that’s a lot to ask.

I want to see my tweets in a timeline, I don’t want to have to work hard to browse through them. In a second I want to see what I tweeted 2 years ago today. I think we deserve that much, especially since Twitter is starting to monetize the service. For as much funding as they have, they certainly don’t seem to be putting in a lot of work into user interface and experience. Relying on third parties for these types of features won’t work, since Twitter has choked companies usage of its API.

Google+

Google+ is the new kid in town, and like all of Google’s products, it’s driven by search. That’s actually a way better experience than Twitter right now. But again, there is no interface or visualization of what I’m posting, who has shared it, and how much activity certain things have generated. Google+ has released a read-only API, so maybe some developers will build great features outside of the service itself.

The thing that worries me about this is that third-party services rarely get popular with people other than geeks. People tend to trust the main company and product, and use only what they’re given. It’s only really curious geeks and nerds who go digging for a new experience by way of a third-party. Perhaps Google+ will have an App Store like Facebook has when it launches Open Graph, so that users can find the experiences and visualizations that they want, without having to leave Google+.

FourSquare

What excited me the most about FourSquare wasn’t becoming the mayor of a venue or checking in with all of my friends. It was storing the information about where I’ve been and what I’ve done for years to come. I personally travel a lot and visit a lot of bars, restaurants, and venues. I simply can’t remember everywhere that I’ve been. FourSquare actually does an amazing job at showing you in a visual way what you’ve done and where you’ve been over the years. Unfortunately, most of this is shown on their website, which most people don’t use. Luckily, the company is weaving this data into their app more and more, showing you how many different coffee shops you’ve been to, for example.

Parents tell their kids stories about where they were on this day or that day, but generations to come are inquisitive and want the information to be completely accurate. Accurate information being readily available is essential to the future of our own personal family legacies. Imagine knowing what your Grandfather was doing and where he was in 1965, along with a photo. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who wouldn’t want to know that.

Delicious, Utopic, and bookmarking services

Bookmarking services tend to perpetuate the problem of sharing into the ether. Those services want to make it super easy for you to share and share and share, so that they can collect the best content on the web. Sure, it’s great that you can go back and reference all of the cool things you’ve found, but that’s not enough. The context of why you shared something is lost, and a “note” feature isn’t going to do it. Entering notes is boring and nobody does it. I want the things that I bookmark to be surrounded with other context, like what other things I’m doing on my computer at the time.

Things are moving fast, and it’s a real-time and instant gratification society. We’re all caught up in the world wide web and we continue to weave this web by sharing, retweeting, liking, and recommending content.

At the end of the day though, what are we going to get out of it? The internet is our digital scrapbook, after all.

I’m not asking for a paycheck or a thank you, but I think it would be nice if these important companies with a lot of funding would start thinking longer term for its users. I’ve used Twitter for over six years, Facebook for just as long, and FourSquare a few years as well. I’ve put a lot of time and energy into making sure I’ve shared and tracked all of the things that were important to me in the moment. These companies are starting to figure out how to make money on all of the things that we say and share.

It’s these services turn to remind us of why we do it in the first place.

With all of the information out on the web that you share everyday, curation is becoming a hot space. ReadWriteWeb reports on a new service founded by former TellMe senior engineer Ramy Adeeb.

Just because this is a hot space, doesn’t mean it’s not overcrowded though. We’ve reported on quite a few services like this, but Snip.it might take the lead in pure design and experience. It’s beautifully done.

Snip.it, first of all, is a great name for the service. The idea of “snipping” parts of the web to save for yourself or to share with a group of people is something even my Mom can understand. As I’ve mentioned, making sure a service is something not just geeks will get is the key to something sustainable.

Getting Started

To get started on Snip.it, all you have to do is connect with your Facebook account. After that, you are walked through 3 simple steps to get started.

This will bring in all links shared on your Facebook wall

Drag the bookmarklet into your browser so you can collect things in one click

You’ll be shown your Facebook friends that are already using Snip.it

Collecting Snips

You can enter a URL into the top of the Snip.it site, or use the bookmarklet for one click collection. Once you do that, you are prompted to enter which collection you’d like to add the item to. If you want to set up a new collection, that’s ok too. You can make it public or private, whichever you like. The controls on who you share with are very easy to figure out as well.

Discovering Content

This is my favorite part of Snip.it. When you go to the homepage, you’re presented with a gorgeous layout of featured content shared publicly by the Snip.it community. Each item has a “re-snip” link, to add it to your collection.

We still haven’t seen what Delicious has up its sleeve yet, but Snip.it really makes it simple and straightforward to collect content on the web you’d like to save for later or share with people.

Following its acquisition by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen at the end of April, popular link-sharing website Delicious has relaunched, keeping many of the features that helped draw users to the service but now offers more social features to help organize the best websites around topics that users know about.

Hurley and Chen, now operating under a new business called AVOS, transitioned into the leadership roles for Delicious and were forced to take Delicious back to the drawing board, rebuilding the eight-year-old site from the ground up. As they note in a blog post on the AVOS blog, “the result is a new homepage, interface and back-end architecture designed to make Delicious easier to use”.

The website is in a “back to beta” state, but has launched as a work in progress. The idea is to retain Delicious’ core functionality but improve the way users discover new links and websites, including the new “Stack” feature that helps collate a user’s favourite links into an easy to share collection, effectively becoming “playlists for the web”.

Put simply, Stacks consist of a group of related links that can be personalised with featured images, titles, descriptions and comments for each link. The Stack is then published publicly, allowing over users to track the collection, viewing any new links that are added over time. The same can be done by other users, allowing you to follow a specially curated collection of links that may be relevant to your interests.

Hurley, speaking with AllThingsD in an interview, explains what he hopes Delicious can provide over automated sharing algorithms like Facebook:

At Facebook, they want as many signals in as possible, and that’s great, but right now it’s really noise. We’re really looking for the signal. It’s great to have passive links to share information, and I’m a fan of what they’re doing. I think peole get burned out of actively participating. That’s what we did at YouTube in a way, a really open viewing and sharing experience, where we never asked users to sign in. At Delicious, we’re trying to do that again here — people can get value without signing in.

Delicious still retains the same branding and the overall concept is still the same – users are still able to use a bookmarklet to save links – but the idea is to incrementally expand the website’s functionality, with “[lots] more features waiting in the wings”. Much of the time spent between July and September was to rewrite the website code, rebuild the infrastructure and migrate the site over.

AVOS wants Delicious’ navigation to be simpler, renaming bookmarks to links and has made sure to support the old APIs and feeds from the previous interation of the link-sharing website. The company has also made sure to introduce multi-word tagging and users can upload profile pictures, with “more social features to come”.

The website has more of a social feel to it now, instead of just a wall of text. Delicious now thrusts visual snippets of curated content at you the minute you visit the website, gesturing for you to seek out and view new content. It’s a long way from where it was.

Whether users will want to come back to the website is another matter, before Yahoo sold the company it was floundering and user data had to be migrated to rival services in order to retain curated lists of links in case they went dark. Hurley and Chen are confident they can entice users to the service, whether that happens remains to be seen.