I just got my invitation (I’ll quit writing about “invites”, it just isn’t a noun) to a beta account for Ma.gnolia. What does Ma.gnolia do? Well, it of course does social bookmarking, which is why I’ve titled my post that way (in case you didn’t grow up in a country where acronyms like ICBIY are standard, YABS simply means “Yet Another Bookmarking Service”. Yes, I am funny like that, and I’ll be here all week).

Now, what makes Ma.gnolia so different from all the other bookmarking services out there? First of all, it’s really pretty. Seriously, not only is the name pretty, it also features an insanely smooth drawing of a flower (which I sort of feel must be a Magnolia. Don’t ask why, it’s just a hunch) as its banner.

As to the functionality of it all, well, can’t say much right now, as they are still working on importing my bookmarks. But there are a few things there which look like I’ve seen them in other services, like the omnipresent tag cloud, a groups functionality, contacts, messages and a few other things.

They are also trying to make a move from del.icio.us to Ma.gnolia as painless as possible, as they are offering a GreaseMonkey script which lets you add bookmarks to Ma.gnolia from within del.icio.us. Which is really pretty of them. And yes, I really should keep away from 1920s literature for a bit. Using the word pretty twice in one posting is simply wrong.

I’ll keep you updated on further developments in bookmarking land.

Update: Bookmarks are imported. Looks very nice. Smooth use of AJAX, a bit slow. Bad tag management. Either that or unintuitive UI, because for the life of me, I can’t find the button that lets you delete tags.