The authors of Connotea, which I’ve never heard of, write an academic (peer-reviewed?) Social Bookmarking Tools (I) – A General Review. Useful, chock-full of links/examples, and not academic in the dry sense. In the same issue of D-Lib Magazine (also never heard of), the same authors give a more detailed exploration/explanation of their own service in Social Bookmarking Tools (II) – A Case Study – Connotea. Pointer to all this was from InfoDesign.
These folks cite del.icio.us as the inspiration. As I watch Matt McAlister apply that service to InfoWorld, I wonder how far it all goes. It’s all fun, and I think TechRepublic.com’s application of tagging to discussion threads is nicely done. I do wonder when/where it becomes more than fun… guess we’ll see.
Sidenote, but I have to say it. I hate typing that damn del.icio.us URL. Now that Schachter has taken funding for his innovative service, maybe it’s time to buy out the useless domain parker at delicious.com? Sure, the tens of thousands of insiders using the service now might feel that it’s less cool, but wouldn’t it help at least a little bit as the service goes to hundreds of thousands of users, or millions, or whatever? (If my numbers are wrong, let me know… my gossip was high five figures for users.) Of course, my idle speculation about my petty grievance with the service’s URL means nothing if this
Google search for delicious keeps returning the service first.
Oh, and http://del.icio.us/pencoyd is where to find my meager explorations.