Last week we were given another assignment in our CSC course. We were asked to study popular sites that are related with tagging and social bookmarking: del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati and Flickr.
Del.icio.us
So let's start with del.icio.us - a social bookmarking site based on tags and metadata. I created an account there at the beginning of the IMKE course but I haven't really gotten comfortable with using it. I don't even use bookmarks that much. I used to have a ton of bookmarks but today I only use bookmarks as a reminder to visit some sites later in the future or as a collection of links (reference actually) for some specific project.
The problem with bookmarks is that they often tend to get out-of-date and you can often find newer and more relevant information somewhere else. I am a big fan of Google and it's the #1 tool for me on the web. By constantly searching for new information (instead of browsing old bookmarks) you can discover a lot more on the web and find new useful sites that you newer knew existed.
If it's a great site I will visit it often and over time memorize the address. If I don't visit it regularly I still remember the way I found it in the first place or some keywords so that I can always find it again with the help of... Google.
When I do bookmark something I like to have my own system and hierarchy. I want to have control over the way they are displayed, categorized, bundled etc. Del.icio.us restricts your freedom and forces you to rely solely on tags. I don't like systems that force you to behave in an uncomfortable manner. Maybe I'm still too "old-school" but del.icio.us is currently not for me.
Digg
Next up, Digg.com - a social driven content website where users post links to articles which are commented and voted by others. I haven't used Digg sepcifically but I have found some good links through... you guessed it... Google searches. Out of the 4 sites covered by this post I think Digg.com is probably the one I end up visiting most often. Maybe I will start using it more in the future but right now it's not on my list of "must visit pages".
I do however strongly recommend to check out Digg labs. They have some really cool data visualization applets (Swarm and Stack) which display real-time information of users adding and accessing Digg.com content.
Technorati
Technorati sounds awfully similar to the Estonian technology related tv-/radio show/webblog called Tehnokratt run by Peeter Marvet. Technorati is basically a blog tracker with some good search functionalities. However I still don't see any practical reason why I should be using it instead of Google. It seems to me thah most people use it to promote their own blog and to get some more traffic and/or links. I also tried to register my own blog there just for the hell of it but I couldn't because the site was overloaded with traffic. Oddly this also happened with Digg.com as well.
Flickr
Ahh... the infamous Flickr. The photo sharing site that everybody is talking about. I have used the site numerous times to look for photos under the creative commons license. It's a great database of photos but I wouldn't use it to store my own photos. When I put some picture up I usually do it so that my friends could see them... most of my friends are in Estonia and that is why I wouldn't want to put my photos on a server outside of Estonia. When your viewing or uploading an album with over 100 photos then speed is still a critical issue. This will probably become a non-issue in the near future but currently it can still cause problems. I also like to keep interfaces minimal and have full control over the way my photos are organized and displayed. To better understand what I'm talking about you can have a look at my own photo gallery.
Flickr is a good tool for displaying and/or advertising photos for artistic or commercial reasons and to get some feedback from fellow photographers. Then again, a photo-blog is more personal and unique - check out Kadi's photo-blog for example.
Wrapping up...
I think there are some good features in all of the 4 sites and they each serve their purpose for particular groups of people (apparently I'm not in any of those groups yet... I'm just your average googler). It's definitely going to be interesting to see how they will develop in the future and in which direction. I was particularly impressed with Digg labs and their visualization applets and hope to see more development in this field.
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2 comments:
A few thoughts:
1. I pretty much agree with you that bookmarks in your computer are a thing of the past and even some of the social bookmarking sites seem to have limited use. Search is the way to go and here Google rules with a mighty iron fist.
I also find my thinking changing in how I remember articles - not so much the contents as the essence or the point main point and some key words or phrases or where it was published to find it later.
2. Technorati is a habitual bloggers and data miners tool. Your average "Joe" has almost no use for it, but if you're a marketer or in PR and going for a global brand, trying to generate buzz than you want to know what people write about, what their attitudes are and here Technorati is pretty useful.
3. Flickr has an Estonian competitor...for Estonians www.nagi.ee - seems to be becoming more popular by the day.
well, Technorati is great if you want to track conversation around a keyword (for example who has mentioned Tehnokratt :-) or a webpage (see sample with EPL.ee page that has Technorati link to track who is linking to this article: http://akamai.kolhoos.ee/tehnokratt/test/epl-test.htm)
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