The PF HYPER Blog: Social Bookmarking

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Saturday, May 28, 2005

Social Bookmarking

del.icio.us (this is a url, web address -- plug in browser address area and go, ok?) is a social bookmarking site. Who cares?

Why Social Bookmarking is a Good Thing

Your bookmarks are stored on the Internet so they are available from any computer that is connected to the Internet (via your Web browser -- Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari, whatever).
If you ever decide to use a different brand of browser, you don't have to worry about your bookmarks because they are stored on the Internet.
You tag your bookmarks and create your own sort of database of tags to find your stuff at the site. (There's even a new term for this tagging idea: folksonomy.) (And the tagging is really easy to do.)
Your bookmarks are public and shared with the world or at least the portion of the world that visits del.icio.us. (Opinions vary on this public aspect. I think it's cool. Some wish for more privacy.)
You see everybody else's bookmarks. They are tagging their bookmarks too so you can see what they are bookmarking on the same types of topics that you're bookmarking and you will discover some new sites to visit with pertinent information.
It's easy to use -- really, really easy to use. After you get your account, go to the About or Post section and read how to use and install the bookmarklets. If you have any trouble with this or any confusion, comment here and I'll try to help. (If you're too shy to comment, email me pfhyper@[take this part out]gmail.com.)
You can use del.icio.us in innovative ways like a collaborative account to store bookmarks on a particular project (or keep separate accounts and agree on a controlled tagging system).
From the del.icio.us/popular, you can see what's popular out there on the Web. At this moment, 796 people have bookmarked 11 Steps to a better brain at New Scientist.
There's other data available like how many people have bookmarked a URL and what they are using for tags.
The guy who started del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter, seems like a really nice person.
You're helping to organize the World Wide Web! (All of us together can tag all of the pages of the Web and finally get it organized.)
It's fun.
For the geek in you, there's RSS feeds galore.

My del.icio.us collection is here.

If you're interested in the tagging phenomenom, here's a scholarly treatment by Adam Mathes.

Technorati Tags:
tags, delicious, socialsoftware, bookmarks

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 10:10 PM [to Del.icio.us]