LIBR 246-12: Web 2.0 and Social Networking Tools (Fall 2008)

The goal of this activity is for you to explore and better understand the value of social bookmarking tools and human-powered search:

By this point, you should already have an account with del.icio.us.

1. Bookmark three resources about social bookmarking, tagging, or social search in del.icio.us and tag them libr246-12 (you can use additional tags as well). One of the resources can be the one you're going to blog about this week.

2. Now, take a look at those three bookmarks. How many other people have bookmarked those same items? Look at the one that was bookmarked by the most people. Click on the number for that one. What are the three most common tags used by others to describe the resource?

3. Click on one of the three most commonly-used tags to describe that item (the tag most related to what we're learning this week). Now, see what other people have bookmarked using that tag. Find one that looks interesting and click on the "Save This" link on the end of the title. Tag this resource libr246-12. You should now have four resources bookmarked.

4. Do searches for the term social bookmarking in Google, Mahalo, CiteULike and StumbleUpon. Describe the differences in the results you get in each and how useful you think these are as discovery tools. Bookmark one more resource that you find in these places and tag it libr246-12. You should not have five resources tagged with libr246-12.

5. Take a look at what other people in the class have tagged libr246-12 (if you're one of the first few people to do the exercise, you may need to wait a bit to do this part). Did anyone bookmark some of the same sites you did? Name one resource/article someone else in the class found that you think looks particularly interesting and save that to your own bookmarks as well. Tag that libr246-12. You should now have six resources in your collection.

6. Write up your experiences doing this exercise as a blog post, and be sure to select Exercise as the topic of the post. Also, post a link to your del.icio.us bookmarks on the wiki under Exercise 4.