Mike: Simpy is quite big, actually. What kind of communication with users are you looking for? There are Groups on Simpy (not on del.icio.us), emailing, etc.

But if I just want to see “the most popular sites”, etc. I don’t even have to be a user on the social bookmarking sites. I can go to sites like http://www.viralbabble.com/ and skim the cream (?) off the top.

Here is a key wiki site of information that Alan gave during a tour of Australia. There are some elements of his talk here:
http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/

Here is the only thing on the NV wiki about Alan’s presentation.

Alan Levine – More Than Cat Diaries – Cool Web Sites That Dont Look Like Blogs but run in Blog Software

Nearly every web ite I create these days runs on a blog platform (it hurt a few weeks ago to update an old HTML tabled web site), and I have long been interested in how people are able to create what I call Blogs that Dont Look Like Blogs. Blog run web sites need not be in your face reverse chronology posts. I ran this a few years back as a presentation on More Than Cat Diaries: Publishing With Weblogs (where I wrenched a lot around with Blogger templates) and sometimes remember to tag a few of them as notcatdiaries. This need not be a techie talk, am more interested in hearing how the features of an easy click and publish platforms can help people and groups focus on their priorities, not the nuts and bolts of running web sites. Or just bring some great examples. *(MVB)

It’s almost like the Mac vs. PC battle, which you and Mt. Lehman seem to fight very well. Do you go with PCs because they are more mainstream or do you go with Macs because they have more functionality.

Ultimately the choice is up to the end user, but I would vote for sticking to the norm. IMO, there’s no sense inputting all of your bookmarks in a new platform only to reconvert back to something like del.icio.us after a few weeks (which seems to be what happened with Twitter vs. Pownce).