Very delicious or dangerous?

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:01:00 GMT

Being involved in information on a daily basis and trying to keep everything organized in my head I'm always looking for tools to streamline and simplify the process. An online tool that's been on my periphery of late is del.icio.us. del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. It has a bunch of neat features and yet there is still a lot for me to learn beyond the surface. Here is what I've learned…

Your bookmarks are saved online no matter where you go.
You can share your bookmarks with others or keep them private.
You can network with others in your field or on your team to share your favorite websites, blogs, articles, news, etc.
Do you hate how you search for something but the website creators described it in a way you would never think of? Well del.icio.us takes that away from the powers that be and gives the power to the people. It's a concept called folksonomies. We decide how to describe a site, tag it, and share it. Over time, the more people bookmark something the easier it is for you to find.
You can see your tags in a list, in a cloud, alphabetically, most recent, how often used, or in bundles. However your mind organizes things, del.icio.us can probably accommodate.
Have you gotten to the point where you love google but can't stand the eight billion, five million, and two results that appear. How do you pick which link is the golden ticket? If you're me, you do a lot of clicking and navigating back to the search results. The nice thing about del.icio.us is that it improves google. How?
- Use your network to see what they are reading.
- Because information is organized by how users tag them, you can search based on your word and know you're getting information that's more accurate.
- Save your research on del.icio.us with your comments appended. Other people do the same and you can read their comments. You get an instant evaluation before you even think about spending time searching a website for your research.
If you have some really nice friends, they might even save a link just for you. I can see how that would be awesome on my team. We use email but how easy would it be to lose track of the email?
Subscribe to your favorite tags. If something new appears with that tag, it aggregates itself all nicely for you on your subscriptions page. No more searching for info, sit back and wait for it to come to you.
Post manually or install a plugin for firefox and a button for IE. If you install the plug-in, bookmarking a page is as easy as clicking a button on your browser whenever you are on that really cool website.
Here's a plus that probably only a technical communicator can love, the site has easy to understand help written in an easy to read style.
Are you using Facebook to social network with your constituents, colleagues, peers, etc? del.icio.us integrates with Facebook! Can you feel the synergy?
Does your organization have a wishlist of items? Create a wishlist of items you need, append with comments (like how many, sizes, numbers, etc) and share that with your constituents. If you're like me, it'd be a list of cool things like a wii, a Barnes & Noble gift card, a road bicycle, nike workout clothes, and an iphone that would magically be shared with my family and friends in approximately five months ;-).
Collaborate with your colleagues, co-workers, constituents, donors, volunteers etc to raise the collective knowledge of a group. This could especially be useful if it has bookmarks to news, calls to action, important resources, and more. Just imagine your network helping your organization be better. That might be in the long range plan but in the meantime...

The only part I have yet to figure out is how not to get overwhelmed by all the wonderfully organized and abundant information. I love information but in this context it's almost as if I could get lost in learning. Is that a bad thing? Is social bookmarking too much of a good thing?

From the Doc Side : social bookmarking

Very delicious or dangerous?