Trunk.ly now an even better Delicious replacement with improved social search

With the future of Delicious in doubt, and rumours of Yahoo selling it on still unconfirmed, the hunt has been on for a suitable replacement social bookmarking tool. One contender, Trunk.ly has just rolled out a great new update that makes it well worth a try.

At its core, Trunk.ly archives all the links you share on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Pinboard and even via imported RSS feeds. You can ‘follow’ other users to see what they’re sharing and all shared links are automatically tagged, making finding similar content serendipitously easy. Now the search side of the service has been improved. You’re now able to search links shared by friends and even by every Trunk.ly user, and results can be filtered down to videos, images and even location checkins.

Users are recommended on the right-hand side of the screen, and this new feature did a good job of helping me unearth a few great follows when I tested the app.

While Google’s social search results offer a similar service, Trunk.ly offers a different vibe – people signed up are (at least for now) the kind of people who made Delicious such a joy to explore at its peak. As a result, it’s a fun, useful take on a traditional Twitter search tool centred entirely around links – a bit like Tweetmeme without the emphasis on retweet counters and covering far more than simply Twitter.

If I have a criticism, it’s that there’s no main, Twitter-style aggregated feed of all the links shared by people you follow – you have to visit their individual pages. Also, the subtle UI is perhaps a little too subtle. The content filters on the left can blend into the screen making it all to easy to miss the most useful features of the site. UPDATE: There is an aggregated feed (and very useful it is too, but it’s under the ‘Friends’ Links’  option on the left, which is a victim of the subtle UI – or at least it was for me).

Still, it’s a well worth trying out, if you haven’t already, for a fresh take on social bookmarking and link searching. Trunk.ly is free to use and open to all.