Mountain View-based HotLinks made waves last year when it was launched by former Netscape engineer Jonathan Abrams. By allowing members to save their bookmarks online and access them from any browser, Abrams sparked the creation of a massive bookmark-sharing facility; one that pooled user links together into one public directory.

"I founded HotLinks so that millions of people could easily share their knowledge of the best stuff on the Web," said Abrams, shortly after the launch. "We're trying to recapture the original idea behind the Internet - to bring people together in a spirit of discovery."

That spirit has also brought to Abrams' attention the fallibility of some of the more popular search portals. Though HotLinks' user base has yet to reach the millions (500,000 at last count), a recent study of the company's directory revealed some of its most popular links are being overlooked elsewhere. Abrams says HotLinks searched Yahoo!, LookSmart and Netscape's Open Directory Project (ODP) for approximately 13,000 of the most popular links in the "HotLinks Guide."

"It turned out Yahoo was missing 39% of these links, ODP 46% and LookSmart 50%," he says.

HotLinks, unlike most online directories, has nearly completely automated its listing process. Solely through its existing users the company has amassed a database of some 50 million bookmarks. HotLinks also regularly aggregates its database in a Top 100 listing, employing but one editor to occasionally double check the directory for misplaced links or pornography. In comparison, popular portals like Yahoo! employ hundreds of editors to arrange its directory, with a mere two million or so links in its database (and a whole lot of porn).

"What Yahoo! does is an old world media model," says Abrams. "They hire a lot of people, sit them in little cubes in a dark cavern somewhere, and THEY control it all. We don't control anything; we are just letting regular people share their bookmarks with the world."

HotLinks hopes to license its automated directory technology to intranets seeking enterprise solutions, as well as to companies developing custom vertical directories.

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