I came away from Jen Hitchen’s great overview of Google Buzz this week with a couple of key findings. Number one (and I really mean #1), I will be making a beeline for Philly Cupcake. Number two, with all of the privacy concerns buzzing about Google’s latest social media offering I’m likely to set up a unique Gmail account for my Buzz test runs before I dive in whole hog.
Privacy concerns aside, as Jen noted, another big question is – will we flock to yet another social media tool? With new technology coming at us in rapid fire, the way I look at is if it’s genuinely useful (and easy to use!) people will.
This month I thought it was about time that I added to the flock of 5 million plus users who find Delicious, a social bookmarking web service that’s powered by Yahoo!, very useful.
My bookmarks were starting to get a little out of control. Twitter will do that to you. Every time I stumbled upon (that might be another post!) a great link, I’d click “Bookmark this Page” in my Firefox browser and well, those bookmarks have really added up.
Do I eventually go back to each and every bookmark I make? Find my bookmarks again with ease? Delete old bookmarks that have no relevance? Do I even remember half the stuff I bookmark? Ummm, that’s a negative.
So Delicious, a free service that’s been around since 2005, seemed right up my alley. Here are a few of the main reasons:
Access – Between work and home, I’m likely to use a PC, two laptops and my iPhone to go online during any given day. I’ll now have access to my favorite links no matter how I log on. Plus if I want to limit the access to some of my bookmarks to the general public, all I have to do is check off the “Do Not Share” option and that keeps them private.
It Really is Easy – It’s easy to register and get up and running. You can also quickly import your current bookmarks with a couple of clicks. Me? I’m starting with a clean slate for the time being. I followed the instructions and added a Delicious Toolbar to my browser. Now all I have to do is click the Tag button when I come across something I like and viola, I’ve added it to my account.
Organization – As my list of bookmarks grew to an unwieldy level, the ability to tag my bookmarks with key words of my own making and combinations is a great feature. Plus, I can add notes about why I bookmarked the link in the first place. Also a great feature for when memory, alas, fails.
To Do List – My wheels are always turning. I’m forever inspired by what I experience, see and do each day. When I come across something that I think is good for me, someone I know, my clients, for Alstin while browsing the web I can create tagged bookmarks that I can (and will!) go back to that won’t get lost in the mix.
Sharing – Delicious provides me with an ideal way to share information with anyone, particularly clients. Rather than sending (cut, paste, cut, paste …) a long list of posts/articles that someone I know should check out for any given reason, I can now send one link that has all of my tagged bookmarks on the subject grouped together. (Recruiters, if you regularly send links to prospective candidates about your organization, good press, etc. this is a great one-stop/one click tool!)
Subscribe, Discover & Network – Another great way to take advantage of RSS feeds, you can subscribe to specific tags and users that interest you. Want to discover the hottest topics on the site and/or the most popular links for specific tags? Yep, you can do that too. Plus, and this is where the social part of the service comes into play, when you add a bookmark you can see other Delicious members who decided to bookmark the same link. So in addition to connecting with those you happen to know that are also using Delicious, this nice feature can also help you connect and share with people interested in the same subjects by adding them to your network.
As it stands now, after an hour tops on the site, I only have a handful of untagged bookmarks in my Delicious account, but realizing its potential I already know is not going to take me very long. Anything that helps me stay better organized, speed up research and connect with great people all while being incredibly intuitive to use (Who likes having to use an instruction manual to master something that’s supposed to make your life easier, right?!) is worth flocking to.
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