Update: LastPass has bought Xmarks!
It’s a roller coaster ride for the awesome cross-platform, cross-browser bookmarks sync service – Xmarks. Recently, they announced that they are going shutter their operations come January as they couldn’t make a business out of this service.
Following user request, they opened up a pledge where they asked for folks to volunteer to pledge if they are willing to pay $10-20/year to keep the service alive.
The past ten days have been an amazing lesson in the power of community. Not in the “web 2.0 social graph” sense – I’m talking about old school community with users speaking up, speaking out and banding together. Thank you Xmarks users.
It seems following the buzz this generated, they have a few offers for the service on the table. You can read the full details here. They obviously can’t divulge any details about the possible deals yet but it is nice to see that they are openly discussing the possibility in their blog.
And there is good news for Xmarks users.
This is not a signed, sealed done deal yet. But with multiple offers on the table we’re pretty confident that Xmarks will continue on with no service interruption.
Thanks to all of you who pledged so far. This has really helped show the value of Xmarks to potential buyers. We don’t know for certain how “Xmarks Premium” will play out, but early indications are that some basic Xmarks features will remain free with more advanced features reserved for Premium users.
I can’t believe that none of the profitable companies didn’t notice Xmarks sooner and acquire them. But, lets keep our fingers crossed and hope this acquisition go through to keep this service alive.
Even if we can live with an Xmarks alternative, it wouldn’t be the same.
{via Xmarks blog }
