Listening to Beta / Social Bookmarking

The number of posts on “listening” are increasing! Or perhaps I’m just becoming a better listener. I’ve recently read posts on listening by Dina Mehta and Chris Brogan. I also enjoyed a link back to Valeria Maltoni who links listening to beta. It’s also a term we’ve been using in the development of Mosoci. I’ve started using Diigo.

For me listening to beta is exactly the reason we pick up on new things so much faster. I’ve also found a few things in del.icio.us that enable me to “beta” test and add to community collaboration without being to invasive. I’ve also upped my desire to send bookmarks to others.

I’m pushing a few more clients to share what they are seeing with me and vice versa. It’s easier than an email, requires no explanation and can be easily subscribed to. It kills two birds with one stone… I get the RSS reader in and start them on bookmarking.

In some cases we’ve created a Del.icio.us account for a Group and then everyone subscribes to it. (see Diigo below). When tagging a new item simply select for:name/group and send it on. What I miss (in Del.icio.us) is the capability to search for my friends via email address so I can send more tags content to more people easily. That means some users/recipients may also want a block function!

I’ve also found my new Wordpress blog “posts” records as a trackback pages that are tagged in del.icio.us. That’s awesome! Thus, bookmarking has finally become a gesture and a tip of the hat to the blogger or person that originally wrote the post. It says I’ve seen it. Further by adding a note to it each one becomes a mini blog. I’m finding such links searchable too.

I’ve also concluded that every page I tag should also include a tag for the author. Sure I may forget or choose not to. At the moment it just seems like an easy way to help them find it in a search whether technorati or google blog search. (johnsmiths have a problem).

After years I think of using Furl, I like the change to del.icio.us. I’d still like some more functionality in Delicious.

• The ability to choose whether or not I ping a blog. (Obviously private doesn’t enable a trackback).
• It is difficult to manage or create any foldering system for my subscriptions. Yes there is bundling of tags however I have to know the name to know what was bundled in there and they then just act like tags. It’s a slow and cumbersome method.

So I also went and looked at almost all the other Social Booking programs that I’m not yet a member of.. Simply, Magnolia, BlueDot.us, etc. Only one really impressed me as providing something more.

Diigo. Takes social bookmarking / social annotation to a whole new level. It’s been written up in Techcrunch and CNet. No point in repeating the good news.

How helpful is it to bookmark a Web site if you need only one sentence from that 3,000-word article? Diigo is a free bookmarking service that lets you do what we wish Yahoo’s Del.icio.us would: highlight text and comment on Web pages. Diigo caches each site so that you can search within text, not just the topic tags. And you won’t have to leave the Del.icio.us community, since Diigo lets you save bookmarks simultaneously in both places. CNet

One thing about Diigo. One gesture to Diigo can simultaneously update all your other bookmarking sites. That may create a lot of duplication, or it may create the opportunity to connect with others across a world of tagging that remains fragmented. I shall continue experimenting with it.

Jim McGee wrote a post on Enterprize2.0 and emergence not so long ago. He related it to marketing and tagging. It’s just the reason I believe that “tagging” and “listening” to the outside world is a great way to introduce the future. If the sharing gesture is simpler and the method for review easier / quicker/ searchable etc. and it can be delivered via RSS to blogs, email, newsaggregators etc. This little action with a small group has the potential to really change the stories we share.

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