Using social bookmarks

Suggesting social bookmarks can be a very useful knowledge related practice. Here are some ways I have found this to be an interesting approach.

I've been slowly drawn into social bookmarking since January this year when I believe Lilia first introduced me to Del.icio.us. Here is my path so far.

Started by collecting my 'favorits' for access from public computers e.g. libraries and when using other's computers but not wanting to 'pollute' their bookmark collection.

Experienced some of the power of shared links, i.e. found others were using tags I'm interested in such as pkm, knowledge_management, knowledge

Pulled tag feeds into my aggregator (Bloglines) as a way to keep up with links others have found interesting and to 'find' stuff. This helps me keep up with the numerous KM links floating around.

Discovered a few users that had very similar interests, projects, studies and far more time than me to search, cross-link and share - added these 'filters' to my list.  An example is Jack Vinson's 'cloc' tag

Found some unique tags that clustered interesting links in my subject areas - Groups were using these to notify each-other (black-boarding), or 'posting' for feedback, critique and comments. Example the use of 'cooperation' tag by the smart mobs mobloggers 

Now I find social bookmarks to be an integral part of my  'awareness', scanning, and KM intelligence gathering. They are more useful than a search engine, provide more focus than a blog feed and give me a different slant on news and information.

Key tags -  KM, knowledge, knowledge_management, pkm, innovation are accessed via my bloglines feeds and are sorted into folders. Tag links I visit less often, are available via a Del.icio.us folder in my bookmarks / favorits on my browser.

I'm finding social bookmarks help me link to emergent stuff, point the way to high quality content, assist with locating people with interests and projects in KM and allied areas, serve as a reminder as new people link to sites, papers, blog posts and KM portals I have long forgotten.

As my tag list expands, it may come to represent key & emergent KM concepts forming a bottom up taxonomy / folksonomy

Would be very interested to explore ethnographic accounts of social bookmarking and social search - Know of any??

Comments

[Ericka Menchen Trevino]

I'm writing my proposal right now for my masters thesis to do in depth qualitative interviews on social boomarks, del.icio.us in particular. I hope to graduate this summer, but I'll post to my blog along the way.

Good luck with your studies Ericka . That is a very interesting topic DCG

[David Locke]

If you want an ethnography, find a funding mechanism and write a RIP. It's way too early to expect anyone to do an ethnography on this subject.

[jackvinson]

That "cloc" tag has to do with items I've been tagging for my KM course at Northwestern. It's in the Center for Learning and Organizational Change (CLOC), so many of the links have to do with KM in the context of the department. I'm glad you are finding them useful. Feel free to use that tag yourself, if you spy anything that might be relevant to that collection of topics.

I am currently using a variety of services to turn up interesting material - I'm using web feeds for all of them and collecty in my aggregator, like you. I've just turned on Google's blogsearch for "knowledge management," and I've been using Technorati, PubSub and IceRocket. There is some overlap, but a surprising amount show up in one place and not another.

[Mike]

Thank you very much for sharing your story on how valuable social / online bookmarking has become to you. We just launched a social learning and bookmarking tool (www.blinklist.com) and so your thoughts and experience as a user are very valuable.

If you get a chance to check out our site, it would be great to hear from you since we are very eager to keep making our service better and better.

Mike

[Harold Jarche]

I'm finding that social bookmarks help in my own work, and I'm getting some interest from clients in the healthcare sector, though we haven't implemented anything yet.
Here's how I use them:
http://www.jarche.com/node/575