This is the fourth in a series with those whom I've had some great conversations in workshops and meetings. The preamble in the first post of this series explains what I have in mind. I hope you'll check back regularly or, better yet, subscribe. You can do that either via the RSS feed or email in the right sidebar.
Related posts:- Social Media Series - Where to Begin
- Engaging With Purpose
- Hubs and Spokes as a Metaphor For Engaging In Social Networks
"What are "Delicious" and "Digg?" More social networking sites?? I have no interest in joining (or do I?) but I've noticed you can post articles to them. Also; why do web/blog page articles let you post to these sites, but not Facebook (or MySpace)?"
A friend of mine asked the question above through my wall on Facebook. It's a great question, I'm glad you asked it.
I started to respond directly on the wall, but, true to my nature, I guess I started to get long-winded. (Hey! I'm working on that!) Problem is, my Facebook wall wouldn't let me go more than about 150 words, or so. (And you know I can use more than that!) So, I figured this was the next best approach, especially since it's likely others may have the same question, as well.
What is Delicious and Digg?
In a nutshell, Delicious, Digg and a bunch of others (StumbleUpon, Diigo, etc.) are a type of social network that fall into another category of "social bookmarking".
The gist is, it's a lot like when we you're out in the wild surfing the web. Every now and then you happen along a site, (like this site, for example! Sorry, couldn't resist the shameless plug.) ;) that you want to save for easy future reference. So you bookmark it or "favorite" it, depending on the web browser you're using.
In the case above, what you save only gets stored on the computer that you were using at the time you bookmarked the site.
However, with a free account on a social bookmarking site (Digg, Delicious, etc), any web site pages, blog articles, and so on, that you bookmark (to your online account) end up getting stored online. That means you can access your bookmarks from any computer in the world that's connected to the web.
Much more convenient.
How Is Social Bookmarking "Social"?
The "social" aspect of it comes by virtue of the fact that, since all these bookmarks you post are getting stored on one computer (conceptually speaking), it can then be aggregated along with the bookmarks being stored by everybody else in the world who also have accounts on that social bookmarking site. Today, the 400 pound gorilla seems to be Digg.
In a real sense, each bookmark becomes a "vote" for a particular web page (whether that be a web site, blog, blog article, video page, what have you). So, since all these pages are voted on continuously, social bookmarking sites have near realtime information they need to do that data crunching stuff and present you with lists showing which sites are most popular on any given day, week, month, and so on.
Another social aspect comes, too, in how each of us chooses to categorize or tag (assigning keywords) the things we bookmark. When we all do that, we essentially help organize content on the web. Those tags and categories, then, can also be data-crunched, aggregated and reported on in different ways. "Tag clouds," for example, are one common way to present aggregated keywords by showing the most commonly used words in bigger letters. On this day, for example, was a pretty big "denial of service" attack on Twitter. You can see the kinds of words (hacked, hackers, surprised...) that are being aggregated.
Why do web/blog sites let you post to social bookmarking sites but not Facebook?
Good question. Actually, you can.
For example, in the link I shared above, you can sort the resulting page by time. When you do that, you'll a bookmark I saved to our ASTD-OC group on Facebook. But, you're question is a good one because the thing you'll want to keep in mind is that bookmarks you share will only be useful for others if they, too, have an account on Facebook, in this case.
Anyway, I hope that helps! I appreciate you asking.
