Product Pipeline

Finding information is hard, and keeping it found is even harder. Not everything online is nicely indexed and cataloged, especially on the continuously expanding web. What's the trick to finding that web site you are sure you saw six months ago that had something to do with Library 2.0? Use a social bookmarking service.

Social bookmarking tools serve two general purposes: helping you keep track of what you've seen and showing you what you may have missed. All you need to use them is an account and a posting tool, generally a browser bookmarklet for your service of choice. After that, any time you read something on the web, click on your bookmarklet, type in a couple of tags (read: keywords), and you're done. Using a social bookmarking tool to find information is just as easy as and infinitely more addictive than searching. You can browse through popular tags, find users who think like you, and subscribe to RSS feeds to your heart's content.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us was released in late 2003 and by April 2006 was garnering 100,000 posts per week. Yahoo!, in a nod to the rise of social software technologies, purchased del.icio.us in December 2005. Currently the most popular social bookmarking service available, it is also one of the most robust and content-rich. It features a simple interface that is easily navigable through breadcrumbs, rich linking, tag clouds, and consistent URL syntax. The success of del.icio.us lies in its simplicity and unparalleled social capabilities.

Maneuvering through del.icio.us requires very little effort. Each page begins with a standard breadcrumbs navigation: a link to the main del.icio.us page plus the combination of user and tags currently on view. On the right side of the screen are linked tags, generally in tag cloud format. All bookmarks are labeled with the bookmarker's name and chosen tags (all linked). Users can jump to all of their bookmarks with a particular tag or to popular bookmarks with that tag. One of the best features is the ability to combine tags with related tags, just by clicking on the plus sign next to the related tag.

You can begin bookmarking after a quick username and email address registration. Del.icio.us provides Internet Explorer and Firefox bookmarklets for posting, though Firefox users will want to install the extension that incorporates del.icio.us right into Firefox's navigation toolbar. When posting, del.icio.us prefills a form with the bookmark's URL and description (the HTML title), provides a space for notes and annotations, and suggests appropriate tags from your previously used tags and popular discriptive tags others have used.

Each del.icio.us entry displays a live link stating how many, if any, other users tagged that same bookmark. Following this link shows you who tagged it and when, what tags each person used, any annotations, and a tag cloud of popular tags. Each username is linked to that user's del.icio.us bookmarks, making the URL history an excellent way to find other del.icio.us users with like interests. Then, you can easily spy on their del.icio.us activities via the networking feature (for usernames) or the inbox (for tags). Since RSS feeds are available for every single page in del.icio.us, you can also monitor these like-minded individuals in an RSS reader. If you find a resource you want to share with another del.icio.us user, using a special tag syntax (for:user) sends that bookmark to the user's account.

Changing, updating, and deleting entries is easy; links to edit and delete are always available when logged in. If you decide your tags aren't up to snuff, especially after you hit 1000 or so bookmarks, you can globally edit them. Del.icio.us offers several other cool features, like the opportunity to “bundle” tags under headings, mark select bookmarks as private, and copy any bookmark in the system to your bookmarks.

If you are a webmaster or have a blog, there are even more fun toys. With a simple piece of Javascript provided by del.icio.us, you can incorporate a link roll (a self-updating feed of your recent del.icio.us links) or a tag roll (a tag cloud of your del.icio.us tags) into any web site. Adding a link roll or tag roll to your web site is a great way to push new web resources out to library patrons, your blog readers, or even just yourself.

Why use del.icio.us instead of another social bookmarking tool? One of the best reasons is the Network Effect, or Metcalfe's Law, which states that the value of a service increases proportionally with the number of users. A lot of tech-savvy people use del.icio.us. They have built numerous tools using the del.icio.us REST API (application programming interface via XML over HTTP) that greatly contribute to its usability, functionality, and value: tools to visualize how tags change and flux over time, to display your most frequently used bookmarks, to rank users by del.icio.us influence, to send bookmarks to your del.icio.us account via mobile phone, and hundreds more.

For librarians The potential value of Del.icio.us to librarians is enormous. Imagine being able to find that elusive article-you-know-you-read-but-can't-remember-where in a few seconds. You can, with del.icio.us. Choosing your own tags is a valuable way to create your own taxonomy. It is a personal mnemonic for your data, and one much simpler to use and more navigable than traditional bookmarks, print files, or bibliographic management software. Del.icio.us is also fabulous for keeping up-to-date on topics of interest, trend-spotting, and connecting and sharing with others. Some libraries already use it to store web bibliographies and push them to library patrons via the library web site or blog. Because of its size and popularity, del.icio.us is a great tool for finding reference sources, particularly on technology topics, and for doing exploratory research. Once you've used del.icio.us, other social bookmarking sites become simple to use—many del.icio.us features are carried over in imitation of the master.

Unalog

Unalog is a stripped-down, open source social bookmarking tool created by librarian Daniel Chudnov in fall 2003 (see “COinS,”). Though the original Unalog is at unalog.com, it is also available in different incarnations throughout the web. Yale Center for Medical Informatics and Yale University Library host one publicly viewable iteration, links.med.yale.edu, for students, staff, and faculty. While del.icio.us was picked up by early technology adopters, Unalog was first developed and used by librarians and people interested in library technology; code4lib members are very active on Unalog, as are other digital librarians.

Unalog has several unique features besides content that set it apart from del.icio.us and other social bookmarking tools. First, users can create public or private groups for sharing bookmarks, perfect for working on a group project or offering up to peers. It's especially helpful to see a list of all Unalog users. This would be unmanageable in del.icio.us, since hundreds of thousands of accounts exist, but Unalog's list is short enough to skim through. It displays a user's ID, with the user's name and a chosen link, plus links to that individual's recent, all, “weighted” (read: tag cloud), or top tags.

Unalog's search features are significantly more complex than most social bookmarking services, both because of Apache Lucene's full-text capabilities and because the creators are “librarian-type search syntax geeks.” Search commands are available for user, tag, title, date, group, and domain limits and include wildcards, proximity, and range searches and, of course, Boolean query formation. Users can also search by date range, something del.icio.us and other social bookmarking tools should have. Each page includes RSS feeds, a PDA version, and MODS.

For librarians Unalog was written in Python and is available for download on SourceForge.net, giving it potential for use as an enterprise social bookmarking solution for corporate intranets, colleges and universities, and libraries. Unalog's extensive search capabilities make it librarian-friendly, though possibly not as consumer-friendly.

Simpy

Simpy is another popular social bookmarking tool. Its clean and beautiful interface makes it easily the most graphically pleasing of any of the social bookmarking tools. Simpy recently took over the content from del.icio.us, and it seems well placed to expand. You can sync your del.icio.us bookmarks with Simpy—a perfect trial tool. Simpy's main page is a little different from other sites: it only displays a revolving list of the most recent bookmarks. Tag clouds are the default display for each user, however. Bookmarks can be public or private, groups are available, and you can set up “watchlists” on other users, similar to the network feature of del.icio.us. Sorting tags by relevance, currency, or popularity is one click away.

Simpy's true merit is in its excellent tag manipulation and searching capabilities. Not only does Simpy search the entire contents of each post (title, comments, tags, etc.), Simpy handles Boolean operators, phrase searching, stemming, field-specific searching, a fuzzy operator akin to Google's (~), and wildcards. RSS can be set up for any Boolean search. Simpy's searching is a trifle more intuitive than Unalog's, though not quite as powerful.

For librarians Simpy is a great example of a user-friendly yet powerful social bookmarking tool. Though it doesn't yet have the size of del.icio.us, its search capabilities alone make it worth checking out.

Going further

Once you've started playing with social bookmarking tools, you may want to go a step further. The Site Submission MultiTool lets you build a custom bookmarklet to post to multiple social bookmarking sites in one click. Currently, 20 social bookmarking services are supported, including del.icio.us and Simpy. Socializer is a free tool that helps bloggers, webmasters, and social bookmarkers. Its “Socialize this” bookmarklet is a multiposting tool for social bookmarkers, and it also provides scripting to include multiposting tools into blogs and web sites.

Social bookmarking services give an interesting twist to the initial promise of cataloging the web, but the true value is found in being able to follow the user in real time, navigating information.