Ok, I’m feeling naive now, because I hadn’t realised what a great portal Delicious is and how easily it helps you tap into the NetGeist. I am annoyed with myself about this, because I’ve used Delicious for over a year now.
So – what is Delicious? It’s a site that makes it easy to manage your bookmarks and favourites so you are never more than a couple of clicks from any link that you might want to go back to. Suddenly moving from PC to PC doesn’t matter because your bookmarks are always there, even if you are a hot desker at by day or an internet cafe user by night or just a browser tart like me.
What’s new for me is just how good Delicious is as a portal into the web. For the last 18 months or so my start page has been Google News, so no wonder my surfing’s been dreary: I’ve read more of the Daily Mail than is good for anyone. (How do they get to be the main link for a story so often?) Delicious is a much cooler way to tap into the NetGeist. My favourite Favourite is Fresh Bookmarks, but there are others. Fresh Bookmarks shows you what’s been bookmarked recently and by how many people. And this is part of the power of Delicious: it’s an automatic ranking system based on self-interest rather than altruism, so it works.
You use tags to sort out your bookmarks, and the collective tagging within Delicious forms what is sometimes called a Folksonomy. For a while I found it hard to find links which had been tagged using the tags I use for my own bookmarks, but in fact that’s easily done using the Subscriptions feature, which gives you more control than an automated feature would.
The other thing that I hadn’t realised is how easy it is to discover who’s got a specific page or site bookmarked, like this blog for instance. (And a special Shout Out to Simon, here. Hey! Simon! I said it was cool!). I keep track of myself on Google and Technorati of course, and I’ve found at least 4 other Ben Warsops on Facebook, but it hadn’t occurred to me that anyone thinks I’m Delicious.
I do give myself credit for realising that Delicous lets other people take a look at what you’ve bookmarked. Feel free to take a look at my bookmarks: you’ll find them rather serious, because I mark recipes and shoes and pages about SatNavs private, but that’s because my account is in my own name.
In summary: Delicious – so much cooler than I thought.
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Aphra Behn - danger of eclectic shock 