Last week, Guardian.co.uk introduced "clipping," a new feature that allows readers to select stories they have read and consolidate them on a profile page. This page can be viewed without signing in. Readers can also read a web page or RSS feed of stories clipped by other readers.

Paul Bradshaw from the Online Journalism Blog points out some drawbacks to the new feature:
- The only way to tell bookmarkers apart is by guessing their name, decreasing the social aspect of the feature.
- New articles are not suggested to the articles that users bookmarked.
- Old "saved stories" cannot be imported, instead, they all have to be re-clipped.

He suggests some improvements that could be made:
- Tagging and user categorization so users can discover each other through shared interests.
- Widgets/bookmarks, which would allow people to clip material from other sites.
- A link for Guardian journalists' clippings, since readers would be interested in what their favorite journalists are reading. Bradshaw writes that this would be a "great way to keep readers on your site."

Bradshaw assumes that eventually the Guardian will allow user profiles to have a link to their clipping pages as a set to their planned social networking service.

Sources: Press Gazette, OJB