Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Social Bookmarking??
I have read the articles they Professor Mabrito gave us, and looked around at delicious, but I still don't get it...what exactly is social bookmarking? Say I am reading an article about the election that really interests me, what do I do next? Does every website have an option to "Bookmark It"? Someone please explain this to me...I feel like an idiot. Can't you simply bookmark the page on your computer in favorites, or bookmarks? Is delicious, and other bookmarking sites, simply a way for you to show other people articles and things you thought were interesting? Hmmm....I'm confused.
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4 comments:
Hi Dana,
Think of when you bookmark a favorite in your browser. It's saved, but only you can see it and retrieve it.
Social bookmarking involves a third party to bookmark your favorites. Other people are also using the same third party as a bookmark for their favorites.
So you bookmark a favorite using this third party. You add tags to this favorite. With the use of these tags, other people with whom you might have something in common(in other words, others who are searching for information using the same tag)can find you and/or the sites you've bookmarked. Thus, social bookmarking!
Did that make any sense? :-)
Another way to look at is like so:
Imagine if you and and a friend are in the same class assigned to research the same topic, topic X.
You meet at the computer lab, sit down at adjoining computers with a piece of paper between the two of you and both agree to write down the URL's of any sites that are relevant and related to your topic to help share the workload.
Over time, your list will grow. Some sites will be identical, but many will not because you and your friend are not going to follow the exact same paths to find information, even if you both began with the same search engine and the same search terms. For example, your friend may click on a source and follow a link within that source that will take her someplace you won't go because you are following a different path.
Also, your friend may discover that when people write about topic X that it's often associated with topic Y, so now she may begin searching for X and Y together, something you did not know because the current way of thinking about and describing X (a taxonomy) doesn't associate it with Y.
Eventually, your piece of paper will be a different and perhaps more comprehensive list than if either of you had been working alone.
Well, take that same process and multiply it by millions of people, but instead of writing on a common sheet of paper, they all are sending the information to a Web site that can organize and process it and allow others to look through it.
And if many of those people, like your friend, continually associate X with Y, our collective thinking about X may very well change and X always may become associated with Y--an example of folksonomy at work.
You can bookmark any site that interests you. On the top menu bar of this browser (look) you can see a tab that says "Bookmarks". That will save this page so that you don't have to go clicking around to find a website you liked.
I was totally lost on the social bookmarking sites, but I guess it is just a place for people to share their bookmarks with others.
I'm glad to know that I am not the only one who was confused!
I prefer to just use my personal bookmarking instead of a social bookmarking. I can still access my sites on any computer, it's just for my eyes only. I don't really see the point of having everyone see my bookmarks. If I want to share a site with someone, I could just email them the link. That's my thought on it. Maybe it's my Pre-Web 2.0 brain that just doesn't get it either!
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