News has come through today that “Xmarks”, formerly “Foxmarks” will now be shutting its service down. Affecting some 2 million users across 5 million desktops, the add-on browser gives users accessibility to synchronize bookmarks, passwords and any other data that may be present on several computers.
According to Stan Schroeder at Mashable, the news was posted on an official blog explaining to users that Xmarks will be shutting its service down in 90 days due to lack of funding and a suitable buyer/outlay. This news has come at a time when Xmarks have said that they see some 3000 new accounts each day. Notifications are now being sent out to people that are affected. The Xmarks bookmark synchronizer acts as an extension to “Mozilla Firefox”, “Internet Explorer”, “Google Chrome” and “Apple Safari”. As Mashable quite rightly pointed out, if asked what people’s favorite Firefox add-on is, they will no doubt say “Xmarks”. After drivers and Firefox, it’s normally the first piece of software installed onto your PC.
Although Xmarks have managed to impress its users with new setup functions and bookmark synchronization, it has not been enough to entice its customers, with competitors such as Google, Opera and Mozilla offering the same service but for free.
Xmarks CTO and co-founder “Todd Agulnick” has said, “For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service. With that investment thesis thwarted, there is no way to pay expenses, primarily salary and hosting costs. Without the resources to keep the service going, we must shut it down.”
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