I have been a Delicious user since about 2007, and I used to use it extensively. Initially, I didn't tag my sites at all. Later I began to appreciate the value of tagging, and began by usually using the words that were suggested to me. However, I didn't have a plan in mind with my tags. In some cases I tagged something "education" and the next time I tagged something as "teaching". I began to use so many different tags for the same category that I constantly found myself cleaning up my tags. Without regular maintenance and standardization, it became next to impossible to find my links. My use of Delicious then died, until I recently received an email saying that Delicious was sold, and I had to opt in to save my links.
Since its redesign, I have struggled to make Delicious useful. I used to share bookmarks with other users. Those links are no longer to be found, and I have to reestablish those social connections. I used to bundle my tags, but those were erased. I found the bundling feature (a hidden link, though available), and will recreate those when possible. In the rebuild of this website, while my links were transferred, my organizational system and social network were not. These are the features that Delicious was so valuable for. Now, in order to make it useful, it seems we have to start from scratch.
All that being said, I think the idea of sharing bookmarks socially, can be a powerful way to support users who need information. Curating information can happen in so many ways using today’s social media. Delicious is one option for doing this. Students would need to be users, follow my account, and know which tags to pay attention to. However, this appears to be a bit tedious. I believe there are better, more visually appealing and simpler ways to organize and share information, although the new feature of stacks provides some potential. Personally, for the moment I believe Delicous is a great tool for being able to store your favorite links on the cloud, and possibly share them with other people. As a social/sharing site, there are better web 2.0 resources to use at the moment. This one is too unfriendly and needs to work the bugs out before gaining social momentum again
Since its redesign, I have struggled to make Delicious useful. I used to share bookmarks with other users. Those links are no longer to be found, and I have to reestablish those social connections. I used to bundle my tags, but those were erased. I found the bundling feature (a hidden link, though available), and will recreate those when possible. In the rebuild of this website, while my links were transferred, my organizational system and social network were not. These are the features that Delicious was so valuable for. Now, in order to make it useful, it seems we have to start from scratch.
All that being said, I think the idea of sharing bookmarks socially, can be a powerful way to support users who need information. Curating information can happen in so many ways using today’s social media. Delicious is one option for doing this. Students would need to be users, follow my account, and know which tags to pay attention to. However, this appears to be a bit tedious. I believe there are better, more visually appealing and simpler ways to organize and share information, although the new feature of stacks provides some potential. Personally, for the moment I believe Delicous is a great tool for being able to store your favorite links on the cloud, and possibly share them with other people. As a social/sharing site, there are better web 2.0 resources to use at the moment. This one is too unfriendly and needs to work the bugs out before gaining social momentum again
