We spend a lot of time looking at social bookmarking sites - you have to if you’re going to build a tool to help make it more efficient to use them. Occasionally we run across some really amazingly stupid stuff.

Here is a classic example. We created an account at a Super/Scuttle site called TwinPrime. Same old same old scuttle style site. Until we tested by putting a few bookmarks in:

So far so good. Then we took a look at it in a browser with Grease Monkey installed to see how it was all playing out.

Hmmm. How useless is that?

We’ve found other Super/Scuttle sites that look like they’re saving your bookmarks but don’t. Ok, low attention advertising sites, hundreds to a server in S’pore, sometimes they break. But the TwinPrime guys did this on purpose.

Amazing.

Why do we do this? Well, a typical scuttle site like this will send us one or two people per week and they typically stay on site for 2.7 pages. So they’re in our target market. And some of these sites are do-follow so they trickle some (pitiful) link juice to us.

Why do we spend time going after a few people per week at some darn-close-to-anonymous scuttle site? And for one micro-drop of google love? Because all of us on the internet not selling services are actually in the position of having close to 100% marginal profit on each sale, so if you can economically go after the three people who see you at Jaghitta, well, then, you’d be a fool not to do the work.

[Yes, I know those graphics don't fit, but there were two choices: make you squint or make it look funny in the template. UI is supposed to help people on a site, not make you squint. I went with easy-to-see.]