Thing #11: Del.icio.us and tagging

I watched the 8 minute Del.icio.us tutorial. Then, I went and tracked down the Common Craft video on Del.icio.us because I've really liked their introductions to other 2.0 tools. Once again, they did good work.

There's something to be said for creating your own tags. You never have to worry about whether the tag/subject you want is available. But, there's something to be said for a controlled vocabulary, too. The MINN23 account on del.icio.us has tags for "blog", "blogs", "blogger", and "blogging" (not to mention "bloglines") -- each with a different quantity of items. That seems like a problem. There's a lot more clutter than seems necessary.

Also, one of the stated advantages of this system vs "favorites" is that you can take it wherever you go. Your bookmarks are available from any computer. Fair enough, but doesn't having to install the tagging buttons on your browser cut into that argument? Between home, office and the Reference Desk, I use about 5 different PCs regularly -- several of which are shared. Having portable bookmarks would be an asset. Having to install buttons on multiple terminals (including several I share with other people) to update them is not an asset.

It seems like where this could be really useful is if you look up a tag and see what are the popular sites with that tag. Unfortunately, the examples that I checked resulted in finding 'popular' sites that were less useful than the ones I was already aware of. To take one example, I looked at the tag "polls", which I had added because of Pollster. The most popular site with the "polls" tag was Polldaddy. Not at all what I was looking for. Plus, you had to sign up for an account. Sigh. Don't get me started on signing up for accounts.

Anyway, I'm going to keep adding my bookmarks to Del.icio.us so that I have access remotely. But, so far, I'm not finding a lot of use for the social aspect of the system. I just don't have time to dig through others' "useful" sites only to find them worthless to me.