Does the world really need another visual bookmarking service? After all, we already have Pinterest and all of its clones. Clipix, however, believes that it has found a way to differentiate itself from the competition. The service, which is coming out of beta today, feels a bit like a hybrid between Evernote and Pinterest, with a bit of Pearltrees thrown in for good measure. It is a visual bookmarking tool that allows you to save bookmarks (or “clips”, as Clipix likes to call them) in well-organized public and private folders. You can, however, also upload your own photos, office documents and PDF files to the service as well.
This mix, as Clipix founder and Wall Street veteran Oded Berkowitz told me earlier this week, is meant to keep the service flexible and allow users to, for example, easily create a folder for all the research they are doing about a purchase, as well as a copy of the warranty after the purchase. His aim is to make Clipix a service that’s what he calls a “Pinterest for the real world” and not just a visual bookmarking tool for content that’s highly visual (and quickly forgotten).
Overall, the service, which has been in beta since February, feels very feature-complete already. There are advanced sharing features that let users collaborate in real time. Folders can be nested within folders and users can easily make their folders either private or public (according to Clipix, 70% of the folders on the service right now are private). The service is available in 12 languages and offers native Android and iOS apps, too.
Beyond Static Bookmarks: Price Drop Alerts
One nifty tool that sets Clipix apart from the competition is its price drop alert tool (the company has a patent pending for this technology). Clipix automatically notices when you save a bookmark from a shopping site and then lets you set up alerts when a price drops by a certain percentage or below a certain price. The service’s mobile apps, by the way, tie in nicely with this feature, as they also allow you to scan barcodes. As Berkowitz noted, this feature doesn’t just work for shopping sites either, but also for real estate sites, for example.
If all of this is enough to really challenge Pinterest and its clones remains to be seen, but Clipix says that it currently hosts about 1 million “clips” already.
The company has received funding from its founder, as well as a number of other angel investors from the New York area and is headquartered in Fort Lee, New Jersey. For the time being, Berkowitz told me, the company isn’t focused too much on developing a revenue stream, but given its price drop alert feature, affiliate links are an obvious avenue for the company to pursue.