Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Is Delicious 'social' or just crack to MetaFilter's coke?
Delicious has been around for several months now and it's been an interesting learning curve for me. At first, it was all about the front page, a constant stream of links from a wide variety of topics that begs the behavior of a moth to a flame. Adding and collecting links from others was fun and seemed simple enough; I didn't pay much attention to backend features, knowing they were there but not realizing their importance.
Then pattern recognition set in. I'm using more of the tag category names listed on the right side of the front page, avoiding heavy use of hierarchical tags and associating interesting links with interesting people. I've recognized a few names of users from other online communities and added them to my inbox to track the links they post. The inbox is more useful than the front page and now the backend functions are making it much easier to use.
At first it seemed delicious was just another linkdump, a more addictive MetaFilter for the obsessively organized surfer. Now that I've lathered, rinsed and repeated, I've noticed my bookmarks are healthier, shinier and easier to manage. But I'm beginning to see there's something missing, primarily, community and collaboration. With MetaFilter and others there's community and collaboration and then some. Hopefully delicious won't be yet another online tool. It seems there could be something more social to delicious than automated bookmark management and distribution. It'll be interesting to watch it move from pre-alpha-alpha to 1.0, or maybe the social part is up to us.
Then pattern recognition set in. I'm using more of the tag category names listed on the right side of the front page, avoiding heavy use of hierarchical tags and associating interesting links with interesting people. I've recognized a few names of users from other online communities and added them to my inbox to track the links they post. The inbox is more useful than the front page and now the backend functions are making it much easier to use.
At first it seemed delicious was just another linkdump, a more addictive MetaFilter for the obsessively organized surfer. Now that I've lathered, rinsed and repeated, I've noticed my bookmarks are healthier, shinier and easier to manage. But I'm beginning to see there's something missing, primarily, community and collaboration. With MetaFilter and others there's community and collaboration and then some. Hopefully delicious won't be yet another online tool. It seems there could be something more social to delicious than automated bookmark management and distribution. It'll be interesting to watch it move from pre-alpha-alpha to 1.0, or maybe the social part is up to us.
