Like many bloggers I try and keep an eye on what is going on by various methods – google news, technorati, digg, del.icio.us etc. A couple of days ago I was doing a bit of research for a design topic I was intending writing a post about and searching for suitable links and information. I used del.icio.us to search for the design subject and in doing so inadvertently came across a fellow bloggers tags for the subject. Knowing that blogger also blogs in a design niche out of curiosity and took a look at their tags. I had never really thought about it before but I saw all the tags they had made in research for a subject that they had very recently blogged about. Now I rarely use del.icio.us for keeping track of my blogging research, purely because I prefer the usability of Google Notebook (recommended by Johno) but it got me thinking –
- Would I really want other people knowing what I am going to blog about?
- Would I want other people to use my research to potentially write a blog post before I do?
Maybe I am being a little paranoid, but take the following scenario:
You are researching the area of direct mail design and your del.icio.us tags feature 5 or 6 websites you intend to feature, a blogger who also blogs in the design niche sees your tags and writes an article about direct mail design using many of the sites you have referenced before you have had chance to write a post yourself.
So while I will occasionally use del.icio.us to tag a reference design site I like, I think I will stick with Google Note Book for my blogging reference and research.
What are your thoughts? Do you use del.icio.us to tag websites in your blog research?
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14 Comments
I don’t use del.icio.us to bookmark, but I can see your point. I take it there’s no way to make your bookmarks private?
Usually for research topics, I’d just email myself to my gmail links with a descriptive subject line. Also reply to my own emails with similar finds.
Thanks for the mention Tara.
You make a good point. One which I hadn’t even considered before reading this. It got me to thinking about the whole Social Networking thing–of course, it has huge benefits, but I think that one of the cons is that it encroaches upon one’s privacy. Admittedly, we readily (more so than ever these days) and voluntarily invite the world (and that’s no exaggeration today) into our private lives.
Your delicious example (no pun intended) begs the question: do we really need to share so much information? Perhaps this will spawn a new type of anti-tagging, whereby people begin to tag all the things they have no interest in.
I don’t use delicious because I’ve never understood the point. I can completely understand the whole tagging thing–great idea, but I don’t wish to share everything with the entire on-line community, just as I don’t share everything in the off-line world. That used to be called discretion, or being selective.
Perhaps a delicious with selective privacy options would be an improvement, so that I have the ability to choose public and private tagging.
I think you’ve raised some very interesting questions.
Hi David, As far as I know you can’t make your tags private (but someone may tell me differently)
Hi Patrick – thanks for your comment, you should take a look at Google Notebook – they are not shared tags and are great for bookmarking links with notes.
Hi Johno, no problem I am now addicted to Google Notebook! Until I saw this design blogger’s set of tags in delicious I hadn’t thought about copying issues before, but like you there are somethings I don’t want to share.
I wonder if there’s a way of mashing Google Notes, so that one can publicly share selected items? Must take a look at that.
You can make you bookmarks private. We have one account that we share between the two offices, anything we want to keep close to our chest like competition, technologies etc we either set it as private or add it to our company wiki.
I did post on how delicious could be useful businesses last month.
Social Bookmarks and business
Jamie
Thanks Terinea Weblog, thats something new to me I didn’t realise delicious tags could be made private (I see know it’s hidden in settings). Perhaps then this is something that delicious users should make more use of with blogging research.
http://7folio.com/imagehost/delicious.png
You can see in this image that your bookmarks on del.icio.us don’t have to be public – though obviously you’d only use this where you were concerned that your ideas would be poached or for a bookmark you wouldn’t want to post publicly – using it consistently would kind of defeat the whole ’social bookmarking’ idea.
I still keep local bookmarks, for things that are more shortcuts and bookmarks in the more traditional sense, and use del.icio.us for reference material and things I want to share.
Thanks Ben, its strange you still have to go in to settings and make your options save a private tags before it gives you this option when you tag. You would have thought this would always be there as standard, but I guess the whole idea of delicious is sharing.
Yeah, this is true – as it’s obviously a feature people use, perhaps they should enable it default.
Much like tabbed browsing in Safari (OS X) – not enabled by default. Odd!
I think that’s the wrong use for delicious, honestly, if I am doing research, i rather create a folder on my web browser as a place to store my research. Unless I work on multiple computers of have a delicious plugin for my browser that syncs my bookmarks.
I us delicious only to store book marks from great sites for eternity. In reality in terms of social software delicious is my least use option. Having it all off line on my browser is much better for my needs.
never thought about that much, i dont really use delicious though. Maybe thats why? lol
LOL, the anti-spam word is trust… I guess we do kinda trust people to be honest. But I can see someone making a mistake and seeing the research you’ve done and marked with del.icio.us and then being inspired. Yikes! This is the way I keep track of my resources… was it me you were spying on, Tara?? *eyes suspiciously*
Unlike DT, I use del.icio.us because I do work on multiple computers, so I tag everything! I don’t use it as a social media, but a transportable link list. I never use browser bookmarks/favorites anymore. But I use a lot of Google’s stuff (reader, analytics) maybe I’m just going to have to start using Notebook, too. I remember John talking about it a while ago.
Hi Lauren
I think with most people you really don’t have to worry, but there is always that subconscious thing where you see something and then a week or so later unintentionally write about a similar subject. Its like when you design something and then get the vague feeling it looks a bit like something else (unintentionally)
I don’t want to mention any names
Google Notebook is great give it a go.