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December 10, 2006
Del.ici.ous Highlights
Success on del.ici.ous
Throughout the semester we have collectively been tagging websites through a social bookmarking site known as del.ici.ous. Founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003, Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking web service which allows users to store, share, and discover bookmarks through the use of “tagging”. Through this tagging, we were able to not only gather resources and information for our blogs – but learn more about our friends and even our entire class. Essentially del.ici.ous allows you to learn so much because of four things: a small learning curve, quick processes, social networking, and bookmark history.
Small Learning Curve. For the most part, del.ici.ous was relatively easy to learn and use. Obviously, just like any other part of technology, there was some learning to be had. However, anyone who played around for a half an hour would quickly understand how the system works. In fact, when creating your account the website asks if you wish to install the browser buttons. We highly suggest saying yes – it’s worth it as the buttons allow you to quickly and efficiently add new tags to web pages. This small learning curve allows everyone to at least trying the site and creates the base for many people to stay. Aside from typical, “what does this mean?” questions, del.ici.ous is extremely user friendly.
Quick Processes. Part of the quick processes stems from the use of browser buttons, but del.ici.ous’s ability to quickly take tagged sites and update them on your home page is vital to its success. Granted, sometimes it takes time to update (if servers are busy) but the relative speed is what makes the trendiness of the website work. At any given time, anyone can see up to date tags from anyone who is a del.ici.ous member. Quick search options for key words are available and even the act of tagging websites is fast – two simple clicks and a few words to type in. In fact, there may even be words suggested for you to use as a tagger – simplicity at its finest.
Social Networking. Obviously, this is the heart and sole of del.ici.ous. Without it, the tagging would simply not mean as much. The power behind the website from its’ social aspects are astounding. If you wanted to, you could watch as other people find the hottest news on anything you wish to know about. Or you can use other people’s tags to guide your search and your tagging. Or, you can be the tag leader! Think it can’t be done? Well, in a matter of a few months our class tag, “Bit200F06,” became one of the top 30 tags on the website – it even sparked outsiders to email our professor. Del.ici.ous really creates a community of fresh thoughts and ideas to numerous people around the globe. Language is no barrier and the fresh way to navigate information is exciting, interesting, and fun.
Bookmark History. Bookmark History essentially supports the social networking, but we felt it was extremely well put together and deserved to be mentioned as a del.ici.ous strength. The history can be viewed alphabetically or by frequency tagged and could also be bundled to help view important topics. For instance, Grant thought it would be interesting to see which websites he tagged the most – so he bundled some of the technology websites he tagged off of. It turned out he tagged news from BBC News the most with CNN.com in second and the New York Times third. What is really cool about the history, though, is the ability to click on the tag name to see every article or website you tagged with that specific tag title. This was extremely relevant to our project as we were able to quickly see what topic interested us and immediately find articles to write blogs on. It also allows us to look at how other people tagged with the same words, thus creating the social community and information highway.
With that in mind we have a few ideas for a better del.ici.ous. First, we think it might be cool to have an area where a community can place tags without creating a new account. For instance, we would like to have had a spot where we could see all of our team’s Google tags without having to go through each of our lists separately. We could have made a team account, but it might be interesting to think how del.ici.ous can do this in another way. Secondly, we thought it would be interesting to think about del.ici.ous implementing “staple tags” to websites. These tags would work similar to the recommended tags, but would not be a choice – they would automatically be a tag name. Obviously, you would only want constant tag names to be used in this way. For instance, if ESPN is consistently used as a tag for ESPN articles, del.ici.ous should make it a “staple tag” for all articles tagged from the www.espn.go.com domain name. These staple tags would do two things – first they would make it easier to gather similar information for people to find. Secondly, it could also provide del.ici.ous with a valuable amount of information they could use to fund their website if they begin to fall.
Regardless, Del.ici.ous was a fun thing to learn and very interesting to use and each of us plan on continuing our tagging!
Posted by grantrob at December 10, 2006 11:09 PM