I have a ludicrous number of links stored away in my browser, saved in my Pocket account, and clipped into my Evernote library. What I’d like is a simple, efficient system for sharing my bookmark collection. Thus far, I haven’t had much luck in finding one. Given our collective obsession with sharing pages, posts, photos, videos and Rickrolls, this seems a remarkable state of affairs.
Of course, there are a few aids out there for sharing links. If you belong to the small population of Delicious users still roaming the web, or you moved on to a service like Pinboard, you’ll be wondering what all the fuss is about. The problem is, not many of us do use these services any more.
So, what about a really simple way of collecting links together — perhaps in a theme — and making them accessible on one page? Enter Streme, a new platform which has been designed to make the creation of shareable link collections as easy as possible. But can it really fix link sharing?
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Simple Setup
Simplicity is everything in Streme. You don’t actually need to sign up in order to get started, but if you do want to create an account, a plethora of external services are on offer to accelerate the process.
Streme-ing
Somewhat confusingly, you share links and text snippets with Streme via one-page lists called “stremes”. Thankfully, the creation of stremes isn’t as confusing as their naming.
After giving your newly created streme a name, you can start to add some content. This is entered via the single-line text box below the orange-backed title. Paste in a link, and Streme automatically retrieves both a preview image and the page title (this can be edited).
Every item is entered via this single-line text box.
But this isn’t dumb link-saving. Links to media — such as YouTube videos or SoundCloud tracks — are automatically recognized, and when possible, the linked content is made playable from within the streme.
Text is presented nicely in a quote-like style.
Text can also be added, and it is displayed with a presentation style which is very similar to that of a quote on a Tumblr blog.
Sharing
As the owner of a brand new streme, you have two sharing URLs at hand. The first allows any visitor to add their own discoveries to the streme, while the second URL merely allows a visitor to browse the list of links.
The design is simple and quite orange!
Visitors of either variety will initially find a clear, simple list, but a closer look reveals somewhat camouflaged functionality. Clicking the play button next to a music track link, for instance, opens up Streme’s in-built music player, which is even equipped with track-skipping and -shuffling. This actually makes Streme a very fine playlist builder.
Streme’s integrated music player makes it ideal for sharing playlists.
Equally, clicking on the magnifying glass icon, beside a video link, reveals the video, embedded within the streme and ready to play. Images work in a similar manner, although according to Streme’s website, the plan is to add image galleries (and to-do lists) in future updates.
Videos from YouTube are automatically embedded.
The final couple of features to note are the comments system (which is simple but efficient), and the count of visitor numbers, displayed in the top right-hand corner.
Overall
Streme is, undoubtedly, a fairly basic service in terms of the breadth of its functionality, but that doesn’t really matter. The simplicity with which you can collate and share links is refreshing, not to mention the potential for collaboration that this platform provides.
Can I realistically put Streme above the likes of Cupcloud? No…not yet. But if the image gallery and to-do list functions come to fruition, as promised on Streme’s website, Streme may soon be rocketing past the better established competition.
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