Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:20:18 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

rons dixon — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:58:31 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Luis Suarez (@elsua) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:36:37 -0000

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!

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:55:49 -0000

hahahahha. thanks, just what we needed

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:52:47 -0000

Checking it out, thanks

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:52:08 -0000

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

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:50:47 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:48:07 -0000

Checking it out, thanks for the hint!

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:47:29 -0000

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

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:45:24 -0000

You bring up a good point, but most social bookmarking sites do not follow voting type mechanisms. It is a downfall in that regard

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

IdoNotes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:44:36 -0000

Wow, thanks for the compliment. Glazing can be a good thing

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

phipphin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:51:11 -0000

Hmm still look blank. One think I think it shouldn't have a splash page - just a waste of time to click.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

phipphin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:40:48 -0000

Social Bookmark sites are great place to share various stories but somehow there also got a lot of spam that promote their sites.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

BostonDave — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:40:59 -0000

Bookmarked, pinged, twitter and stuffed into my friendfeed...

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Social Bookmarks — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:35:45 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Spore — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:47:11 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Sheraz Mahmood — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:29:32 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Nicole Simon (Berlin, Germany) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:53:52 -0000

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. :)

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

rogersdc — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:58:14 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

MyZine.com — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:25:14 -0000

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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Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

h.g — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:36:28 -0000

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...

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Jennifer B — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:31:04 -0000

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'

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Nicki B. — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:08:43 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Denise Olson — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:01:44 -0000

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.

Re: Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous or a Useful Tool?

Sean Brady — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:55:45 -0000

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.