Feature Proposal: finding and rediscovering shared links

[Seif Lotfy <seif lotfy com>]

Ben, Peter, and Bruce share links to interesting articles and videos and sometimes they can't check it, like if Bruce is in a meeting or out and about on his phone, but if his computer also kept track of the link in IM, then he could look at it then.

So one thing is that Bruce is unavailable to look/read/watch something, so defering it to later is an option. Another is if Bruce is looking at something and needs to come back to it. E.g:

Someone sent Bruce a link to bugzilla and Bruce remembers that he wants to check on it and do stuff w/ the bug, but 2 or 3 days later or the next week he asks himself where "where was that bug again?".

Seperating those links into links one has NOT been to yet, but are in messages, are even more interesting.

It would be nice to see a recently encountered link view, where the user can see can see a list of links shared with the him.

  

E.g: Sometimes Ben asks Bruce about some link he shared with him. It would be nice if Ben could just find it based on the content of the link and links they shared (sometimes he's not sure it's Bruce, but it's most likely Bruce)

Bruce could use that same tool to look at links he shared with Ben: "What was that page of that _javascript_ library that does the animation thing that you sent me a few months ago?"

That happens a good bit, not all the time, but often enough, since both often share things with each other but one or the other of them forgets. Some of the stuff they share is just for fun other things are useful for work. And it's all mixed in together. Often, the funny and interesting things are videos and then the work stuff has various keywords, like css or _javascript_ or such (and are usually not videos) 

So a possible view for this feature can be done in Web: Links received can then be automatically put in the queue of Web. And once visited can be taken out of the queue.

Another possible view would be a dialog for sent/received links for the Contacts application.

To sum it up: it would be appealing to have a readitlater queue without explicit managing (well allowing that, and having those prioritized) as well as having links sent through some direct mean (IM, mail) populate it.

One might argue that sharing happens via Social networks but a lot of it happens via IM and E-mails too. The concept applied for both.

I have 2 mockups for this idea...

The first would blend in nicely with the current designs of "Web" http://i.minus.com/ibfFpg4wMTscf0.png

The second would require adding a new view but has the advantage of allowing a more interactive as well as informative (contextual) display of the links http://i.minus.com/ibq81FRZb2iII4.png

Cheers

Seif