Today I logged onto Ma.gnolia to bookmark websites for my assignment that I could later share with my classmates only to find that the service was no longer available. It turned out that Ma.gnolia was going through a nightmare due to “data corruption and loss.”

The founder of Ma.gnolia, Larry Halff, posted this note on the homepage:

Dear Ma.gnolia Community Member or Visitor,

Early on the West-coast morning of Friday, January 30th, Ma.gnolia experienced every web service’s worst nightmare: data corruption and loss. For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members’ bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API. As I evaluate recovery options, I can’t provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours.

I will of course keep you appraised here and in our Twitter account.

Most importantly, I apologize to all of you who have made Ma.gnolia a home for your bookmarks and community. I know that many of you rely on Ma.gnolia in your day to day work and play to safely host you bookmarks, keeping them available around the clock, and that this is a difficult disruption.

Sincerely,
Larry

As a Ma.gnolia member, I’m at a loss. Despite the fact that I have a Del.icious account,  Ma.gnolia was always my go to social bookmarking site.

I hope they figure out what went wrong and are able to come back online.

In the meantime, what social bookmarking site do you recommend?

February 17, 2009 Update
The database file recovery has been unsuccessful; as a result, members should use the the public bookmark recovery tools for recovering their bookmark collections that were once stored on the Ma.gnolia database. For more updates, go to Ma.gnolia.com.