DISQUS

Mashable - The Social Media Guide: 2008/08/03/social-bookmarking-3/

  • Ling · 1 year ago
    If I was interested in knowing how to write an article which makes the reader's head spin and their eyes glaze over, I would definitely bookmark this page. If its any consolation, I read it entirely, right down to the last word. :)
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    Wow, thanks for the compliment. Glazing can be a good thing
  • Beautiful Scraps · 1 year ago
    Who cares it is useful or not.. It is all about making the name for themselves.. did I say twitter ???
  • Tech Blog: FutureBells.com · 1 year ago
    I thing the big aim to Be famous, and its depend on user votes so Quality is maintained by users..
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    You bring up a good point, but most social bookmarking sites do not follow voting type mechanisms. It is a downfall in that regard
  • Sean Brady · 1 year ago
    I am not sure the motivations for bookmarking inside of an enterprise are as personal as on the Internet in general. I am a strong proponent of bookmarking behind the firewall, and providing people the ability to quickly mark a web page they are viewing as interesting is very important.

    If we assume that people are not bookmarking CNN and ESPN and rather are marking relevant articles on subjects closely related to the business then I think that social bookmarking in the enterprise is very useful.

    As part of a broader knowledge management initiative, having people mark the best articles they read (not required to tag or comment) and then using an advanced search engine (something like the Business Objects tools) to do a federated search on those marked pages provides access to some of the best articles from the web as chosen by the experts at the company. Easy to relate to the searches that the people in the firm are doing against internal data.
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    Exactly my point. Who decides who is an expert in an area? I like the idea of social bookmarking, but I think it is not used effectively (sites like you mention). From there, you need some formatted tagging engine or format, otherwise there is too many links that cant be searched without a context attached
  • Moultrie Creek · 1 year ago
    I use the Diigo (http://www.diigo.com) bookmarking system to support my family history research efforts. In addition to bookmarking and tagging sites, I can also highlight specific content of interest and add notes - public and private - regarding the page. On the social side, the genealogy community is using Diigo to share our collected bookmarks in a sort of grassroots directory of online resources. It's been a very effective research tool for us.
  • Nicki B. · 1 year ago
    It's entirely to be famous. The idea is wonderful, to have a nice, easily accessible location to store your bookmarks. But, let's be serious, here. How many of those bookmarks you *really* have in your browser are the more frequent users of these social bookmarking sites are going to be shared? Likely 10% or less. Either way, it can be useful - when the popularity is entirely user-based and not determined by some hidden editor controlling the content and not allowing whatever doesn't fit into their book of acceptable, whether or not the community at large finds it useful or interesting.
  • Jennifer B · 1 year ago
    I have been helping to test www.youbundle.com and they are doing some interesting things with bookmarking.

    The site does a 180 on the other sites and disregards orphaned bookmarks and has the user put similar links together in a bundle.

    The result is nicely organized bundles of links of whatever subject you could think of. Really cuts though the 'noise'
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    Checking it out, thanks for the hint!
  • h.g · 1 year ago
    This is a great post, thanks for sharing. Of course, the "gaming" of tags is just one of its problems. Even if you could control them (have some sort of spamming criteria" you would still need to coupe with plurals, polysemy, synonymy, and depth (specificity) of tagging...
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    If someone could move truly into the sematic engines and remove spamming tags, or better yet qualify each link and assign some tags by the content found at the link, we would have a great headstart.

    Thanks for the compliment
  • MyZine.com · 1 year ago
    Social Bookmarking for fame!
    I would think that is all about socializing.
    To know others and to be known , that means Famous and that is the core of Social networking :) FAME


    MyZine.com
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  • rogersdc · 1 year ago
    Well written article, but somewhat naive.

    There is a large number of users of social applications (bookmarking, networking, video, pictures, you name it) that see the applications as a self promotion game. They miss out on the practical value that was (most likely) intended by developers and is expected by a vast majority of users. The trick for the user is to filter out those garbage users and focus on what is valuable to you.

    For developers of social applications, it is important to recognize that these gamers are out there and that some play the same role with social applications that spammers do with email. If this isn't addressed, social applications may become as overwhelmed as email has by unwanted communications.
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    Thanks for the comment. It wasn't posted to be naive, but to point out what many users miss when utilizing the social bookmarking services. Consider that most of the users are not fully technical savvy in regards to the true developed ability and use it because someone else is on there or to find the most popular links. We use it for research, help in areas from those that might know and also to keep up on news, trends or whatever.

    You see it for what it should be, a valuable tool. Too many see it as popularity.
  • Nicole Simon · 1 year ago
    I think it is like asking if blogging tools where there to express your self or to promote something. It is of course both.

    Me personally, I usually bookmark sites I want others to see, where others can be peers but also strangers. 'I want others to see' for me means "i put it out there and if it crosses their screen, I think they'll like it if they are subscribed to me".

    Also I will be using bookmark sites for research for a specific projekt and I will rely on delicious a lot. Because the way they structure it will make it a research feast for me.

    Which I think is okay to 'use', because I do enter information there as well and I am very interested in adding for example a language tag.

    Different to that, a site like Digg I would not call a research site, but 'headlines of today'.

    So different tool, different purposes.

    Also I use it commercial to add links to the services, though I do not use my own users for it if it is not something I would have bookmarked otherwhise. You bring up the point of 'rendering it useless' to which I disagree - we just need to find mechanisms to make the stream of information more relevant to yourself. :)
  • Sheraz Mahmood · 1 year ago
    We at letscube.com are using a semantic engine to process the bookmarks, its an interesting approach as it allows the pages to search later by your friends.
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    Checking it out, thanks
  • Spore · 1 year ago
    I think very few people use social bookmarking for the original purpose. It has become just another online game (for fun or profit) a long time ago.
  • Social Bookmarks · 1 year ago
    In its most basic form, social bookmarking is great to find and share items of extreme interest or quality. But I find that social bookmarking is losing its luster as many SB sites are dilluted with less then average quality material.
  • Dave · 1 year ago
    Bookmarked, pinged, twitter and stuffed into my friendfeed...
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    hahahahha. thanks, just what we needed
  • phipphin · 1 year ago
    Social Bookmark sites are great place to share various stories but somehow there also got a lot of spam that promote their sites.
  • phipphin · 1 year ago
    Hmm still look blank. One think I think it shouldn't have a splash page - just a waste of time to click.
  • Luis Suarez · 1 year ago
    Hi Chris! Lovely & thought-provoking blog post, indeed! That was a good read although I think we should make a distinction here that not sure whether you thought about it or not: Web 2.0 vs Enterprise 2.0

    In the consumer space it can be seen as competition & fame, because folks are trying to find out their own space against others and competition there seems to always be a factor in how folks get to use most of the 2.0 tools out there. Not going to comment further whether it is healthy or not, but I can see the benefits, although there are plenty of cons as well.

    But what I am really really interested in this blog post is the E2.0 aspect of it, where I feel that knowledge workers would be way beyond the point of fame and popularity and more into usefulness & interestingness, which definitely do not qualify as expertise, but it is the right step forward, imo. Having someone who, behind the corporate firewall, bookmarks plenty of sites on a specific subject, related to the business or not, would help identify that user, by others, as someone worth while reaching out to find out where his / her expertise goes.

    That's what I am missing from the article as well. It is not about finding the right content, but also finding the right experts & connections to enhance that content. And for a while now we seem to have ignored that aspect, when, to me, it is one of the most important and fundamental: reaching beyond the content and into the experts. They shelves can tell you whether they are an expert in the materials or not. And every single bookmark bookmarked will always have the name of the individual, so easy access is there, too!

    Finally, one other aspect why I think that social bookmarking is incredibly helpful for is one that you haven't mentioned, but which I think has got the highest potential. And that is the one of integration. Integration with a search engine, for instance, where the results of a particular search query can be enhanced with the links shared / bookmarked in that particular bookmarking tool. So much so that it can dramatically change the perception of accuracy of the search results because they would not only be validated by the various search algorithms, but also by the various folks who may have bookmarked the tool as well.

    Yes, connecting both content and people & getting the most out of it! That's the whole thing behind social bookmarking in my opinion, and behind E2.0 for that matter!

    Thanks for the great read, Chris!
  • IdoNotes · 1 year ago
    Luis, I am glad you jumped in (and sorry I took so long to respond). There is a large difference between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 uses of social bookmarking. But just bookmarking doesn't make anyone an expert. I see how you said to reach out and then see how far expertise goes, it is the thought that because I read something I am an expert. I would get more value from their comments and postings on that topic.

    As for the search results, I do touch on that. Spammers and the like are getting smart knowing they can raise their results with the proper amount of social bookmarking as you mention.

    If people are using the bookmarks for research and tagging, to enhance searches and knowledge it makes a business case. But not when they are using it as a dumping grounds for things to see later.
  • rons dixon · 1 year ago
    I think that social bookmarks are great sites, if they are more topic driven. Using the traditional search engines normally yield somewhat poor results. If you look at what mahalo is doing, that is an extension of social bookmarking. stuff like that makes sense. more information rich.