A Delicious Contemplation
Having recently created the 1000th bookmark on my Delicious site, it’s as good a time as any to pause and reflect on social bookmarking.
I think Delicious itself is one of the most smartly realised websites out there. Its pared-down 2008 redesign – with its two-colour, modular interface – perfectly suits my design sensibilities. Not only is this one of my most important social media resources, but is one that has significantly changed the way I think about collecting Web-based content. I can confidently and routinely save and forget about the resources I tag, yet easily find them again when required (evidence that tools can and do shape practice). Any ‘intra-personal’ tagging inconsistencies are quickly resolved by occasional housekeeping.
Folksonomies would seem to represent a radical democratisation in the ordering, managing and sharing of digital content. Yet part of my role as a critical researcher is to challenge the rhetoric that routinely surrounds Web 2.0 technologies, and in considering social bookmarking, two issues in particular spring to mind:
Just how social is social bookmarking?
I’m fully aware of the social and collaborative affordances of social bookmarking sites like Delicious, yet I consider my own resource as predominantly a personal rather than social bookmarking site. Clearly there are specific strategies and methods that can be adopted to utilise participatory features such as networks and subscriptions, yet I’ve never been motivated to apply them regularly. Is this use of Delicious typical, or am I oblivious to widespread social and collaborative practices across bookmarking sites?
Replication
I also wonder how distinctive folksonomies represented by the collective tagging of a platform like Delicious actually are. When I’ve occasionally used Delicious as a social search engine, results have been interesting, yet I’ve not been inspired to adopt this activity regularly. If the majority of users are saving Web resources based on Google searches and social networking interactions, does social bookmarking merely replicate existing and more dominant systems? I’d be interested in any thoughts on this.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:30 am
So its not really ‘social’ bookmarking after all, but an online bookmarking tool that others can see if they wish but doesn’t provide them with any more material than a Google search does?
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:51 am
Interesting. I have been thinking about it myself.
I bookmark many resources daily. I try to tag it such way that I can easily find it again, but most often I go back and google it if I need it.
I have moved from delicious to diigo now, and what I like is the fact that I belong to groups of interest and that it send me a digest email with the bookmarks that were shared that day. I scanned through it first thing in the morning and sometimes I find interesting stuff, I hadn’t come cross before.
I alos like the fact that we now can annotate sites (and highlight paragraphs) and share it with others, or just keep it to yourself. I use this feature fairly often…more on my own than in group, but it would be nice to explore such possibilities with others…just like Mike Wesch and his students did http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=199
But you are write, I don’t think most of us is using social bookmarking to its full potential…
March 6th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
I use delicious regularly in my teaching to share resources with my students, but I don’t use the “share” function. I find it cumbersome and difficult to learn (for my students). Instead, I have my students use a shared tag for specific assignments. You can check out the mm334 (our course number) to see how many my students have contributed.
However, this semester I am using a computer lab in which all of my students have access to a computer. I can assign multiple websites for them to work on simply by tagging it for that assignment. They go to my delicious website, but then I can assign them specific websites. This makes it much faster for me to assign different groups different tasks.
Finally, my students can go back and revisit video clips or websites I have used in class. All of my students have a delicious account, and it is up to them to add to delicious what they want from my own account. I have also had students create annotated bibliographies via delicious, then email the location (mm334bibliography).
March 8th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Thanks for your comments. Criistina and Virginia have clearly demonstrated that a range of social and collaborative practices are possible with bookmarking tools. What are the implications of this in terms of context? Sites such as Delicious retain content as delineated by the single web page, whereas the web annotation tools Cristina mentions introduce the potential to shift content ‘boundaries’ from that determined by the original source (and its author) to that of the recipient (the one doing the annotation) and his/her space.
March 10th, 2010 at 1:11 am
One thing I find is that there is a question as to actually “owns” the knowledge. I have been very frustrated because my students tend to look at my bookmarks as MY resources that they should use, rather than contributing to others and my knowledge. I have been working on getting them to share knowledge.
However, the educational system in the US does not teach students to share resources as that is viewed as cheating. So I need to establish new habits and overcome tendencies to hoard information. Sharing information might give one student an advantage over another, so they don’t want to do it.
So I guess the question is: do students or workers for that matter, really want to share information? If so, why?
March 10th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Students from a very young age are increasingly engaged in using social media to share ideas and content, yet the transference of these practices to formal educational contexts is negated by a prevalent assessment-driven student learning culture and competitive environment. Modes of sharing can be formalised into group-working scenarios and collaborative exercises, but that is very different from cultivating a sharing ecology.
March 12th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
The post and comments really demonstrate the different ways in which people use tech/networks. I explored my thinking in this diagram http://www.flickr.com/photos/francesbell/4022783424/in/set-72157594211705821/ for use in a class but I am still pondering, and developing my ideas. My response to Andy is that I think folksonomy could work where a community share a language, and on delicious if the community has meaningful engagement on delicious. My use of delicious is mainly to store things I find elsewhere (often via my Twitter network). So delicious could be used very purposefully in a group. With my students, I use delicious rather as Virginia describes but I also encouraged them to experiment with using it as an alternative search engine.
March 26th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by andycoverdale: New blog post on social bookmarking – A Delicious Contemplation http://phdblog.net/a-delicious-contemplation/…
May 19th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
I use delicious regularly in my teaching to share resources with my students, but I don’t use the “share” function. I find it cumbersome and difficult to learn (for my students). Instead, I have my students use a shared tag for specific assignments. You can check out the mm334 (our course number) to see how many my students have contributed.
However, this semester I am using a computer lab in which all of my students have access to a computer. I can assign multiple websites for them to work on simply by tagging it for that assignment. They go to my delicious website, but then I can assign them specific websites. This makes it much faster for me to assign different groups different tasks.
Finally, my students can go back and revisit video clips or websites I have used in class. All of my students have a delicious account, and it is up to them to add to delicious what they want from my own account. I have also had students create annotated bibliographies via delicious, then email the location (mm334bibliography).
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