So this: del.icio.us/rickspencer is a link to a free site where you can post your collection of links. It seems kind of useless right? Why don’t I just collect the links in my favorites/bookmarks? Well that’s all fine and dandy until your computer crashes, or is simply not available for whatever reason. Maybe you’re at work, maybe you’re simply at an internet kiosk somewhere and you want to make a reference to a website, but it’s too difficult to explain. You and type del.icio.us/yournamehere and see whatever you’ve posted.
Now that’s the purely selfish purpose. Making your links, your references, you iLibrary as ubiquitous as the web itself. But also, to the limit of your involvement, is the opportunity to interact indirectly with other people. Consider it a way to explore the web with a personal trainer, and or be that personal trainer. You can categorize your links by tag, and then see all the links that folks have posted which share the same descriptor. For instance, I follow user experience IA stuff, and therefore I collect those refrences, I recently added a site OK/Cancel mainly because I didn’t want to lose the reference to this site that I FOUND on del.icio.us. OK/Cancel is a usability comic. Geeky, but useful in a semi-tangential way. They mention the pros’ pick on them and may serve as a guide to the names in the field for novices like myself. Then I tag it with terms like ‘comic’, ‘usability’, ‘interface’, ‘design’, because I think those metatags are adequate but not inflated or terribly subjective qualifiers. I practice my taxonomy interest on the site for the sake of keeping to the point of del.icio.us, and it’s good exercise. It get’s posted immediately. Now I can kind of check on the appropriateness of my tags by comparing my entry with other entries under those terms. Again it’s an experiment in social networking, taxonomy, and just a great place to learn how people qualify their data.
Try it, use it to your purpose. If you’re into the web like I am. If you believe that Web 2.0 (the social version) is the next stage of global conciousness maturation, then you’ll benefit,and you’ll see the web, and information, and people in a new light. Study, be dilligent, and have fun.
ciao.
PS: I should note that one of the coolest features is the bookmark pop-up thing that was introduced to bloggers some time ago. You have this little link in your toolbar that when clicked opens up a pop-up window that contains a little form that allows you to submit your links automatically. create an account, check it out. It’s cool.
that is interesting. thank you for sharing.