Once you’ve signed up, bookmarks can be added via the website or (much more conveniently) via Firefox and Chrome extensions, as shown in the screenshot above. These add-ons are a bit fiddly; you must be signed in for the Chrome add-on to work, while the button for the Firefox add-on is hidden down at the bottom-right of the window. It also took me a while to figure out how to clip content from a web page.

Once saved, pages can be tagged, shared with contacts and made public (note: this effectively publishes a public cache of the page you’ve saved; there may be copyright implications in using this feature). Editing bookmarks/saved content like this can only be done via the website, not at the time of saving it with the extension. Bookmarks can also be imported from Delicious, Firefox, Chrome or any other service that lets you export your bookmarks in Netscape bookmark format.

By default, the website shows your saved pages in “fancy” view (thumbnails) and displayed in chronological order, but you can switch to a list view if you prefer. Bookmarks/saved content is searchable via the search box, although, strangely, it doesn’t seem to include page titles in the search. Mobile support is provided via a mobile-optimized version of the website, which works well, and there are also RSS feeds available: a private feed that contains all of your bookmarks, and a public one only containing those you’ve marked as public.

Copyto.co is free for storing up to 50 bookmarks, which should be enough to give the site a try to see whether you might find it useful. More than that and you’ll need to purchase a subscription, which costs $15.99 per year, or $1.99 month. While Copyto.co is similar to traditional social bookmarking services like Delicious (recently sold to Avos Systems) and Pinboard, its clipping functionality also means it’s competing with note-taking apps like Evernote and OneNote. Combining bookmarking and clipping services means it’s something of a compromise. As a simple bookmarking service, it works pretty well, although it doesn’t have the more-advanced social features of Delicious, and it’s more expensive than both Delicious (free) and Pinboard (one-off payment of $9.33 currently), plus, I find its extensions to be a little clumsy. As a general-purpose clipping tool, it’s nowhere near as powerful and flexible as Evernote, and once again, its extensions aren’t as well-designed. However, it’s still a new service, so I expect the developers will work on making the extensions easier to use, and I can certainly see Copyto.co being useful for certain use cases: researchers who need to clip and share specific portions of webpages with others, and developers who often to grab code from the web, for example.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015
• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

As much as I try to resist, I do end up spending a good amount of time browsing around. Most things I can quickly dismiss but sometimes I do find something of interest and wish to set it aside for later viewing. I’ve been using a tag in my del.icio.us account for this but am intrigued by some of the services that are designed for just this purpose. A recent entry into this field is LaterThis which launched last month.

The idea behind these services is to let you quickly mark something you find online, usually with a bookmarklet, and then present these unread items to you later at your own leisure.

We’ve covered a similar service Instapaper in the past and were generally impressed. Our own Aliza Sherman wrote in depth about using Instapaper as a Tickler for story ideas which is largely what I need as well. At the time, a concern of hers was that the lists might get overwhelming and being able to categorize the items would be a useful feature.

LaterThis seems to have listened. It is quite similar to Instapaper on the surface but with the added ability to tag items upon creation as well as greater display options to view your saved items. You can view by tag, star a favorite item and view saved items by timeframe.

Overall I find LaterThis very easy to use, but these additional features add a level of complexity to the application that is missing from Instapaper. Adding to Instapaper is a one click process while adding an item to LaterThis adds an extra step for tagging and comments. This step is thought, and that thought is time and further distraction. Really, it turns a simple bookmark tool into more of a bookmark manager like del.icio.us or even your native browser system.

I think both apps have their audience and the likely factor that will determine which would be more useful to you is how long you leave your pages unprocessed. If you are really looking for a short term “Hey, look at this later” solution, Instapaper is probably your best bet. Those who might let things linger a bit longer will appreciate the organizational abilities that LaterThis brings to the table.

For me I like the simplicity of Instapaper, preferring to leave the tagging and organization steps to the review phase.

Both services are free, offer handy RSS feeds of your items, and offer ubiquitous iPhone support.

How do you manage your temporary links? Which service best fits your working style?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks