Thing #11 is all about the tagging and del.icio.us accounts.
Tagging is like adding a note to your photos, bookmarks, web pages, in your del.icio.us account, your blog, etc. While I usually tag things on my blog and in my del.icio.us account, in other places I slack on the tags. I just don’t have the time to put on tags on everything. But I did created a tag for ’23 Things on a Stick’ when I started this project. Tagging in del.icio.us is pretty easy also and its good to organize so many bookmarks.
Del.icio.us is a like a big folder of your favorite websites and one that you can share with others. When it first came out and my impression was ‘so what’. But once I realized that if you are on many different computers, like I am, at home, work, school and the laptop, its hard to keep track of all those bookmarks. So you store them in del.icio.us and you can find them wherever you are (well as along as you are online). You can also see other peoples bookmarks. So you can spy discover what friends and foes are looking at.
Is there a potential tool for research assistance? Yes, on a very basic level there is. But since everyone can use their own terms it does make searching a bit difficult and i think you would get either too many hits or not enough. I think that this stage its a great way to make bookmarks.
I looked at the Maui Community College Library which uses del.icio.us and its interesting. Libraries can take advantage to social bookmarking as ways to lead their patrons to useful sites and information.
I also took a look at Furl, which is another social bookmarking site. From just looking at their site it does not look at the different from del.icio.us. Actually both Furl and del.icio.us could update their look. I think they both look rather dull aka not very aesthetically pleasing.