_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

For my second to final class, I'm taking INF506 which is Social Networking for Information Professionals.  I feel like I've already jumped in headfirst to this topic last week when I participated in the Library 2.0 conference. That conference really gave me a sense of how important social networking tools are to our professional development. The fact that some of my most meaningful learning actually came from a conference of other professionals rather than from formal university instruction (sorry CSU... no offense) confirmed for me that we learn best when the content is relevant and well-timed. Plus, in this industry that is changing so rapidly, we must learn from those that are the most innovative and passionate about these topics. It's so important to share!

Anyway, my point in this blog post was to just mention how we are using Facebook as the main communication platform for this subject rather than CSU's Interact. I have to say, I love it already. I'm already in Facebook. I know it fairly well. It's nice that my coursework is actually a group within Facebook. Plus, I get quick updates when new people post into the user group. However, one of the things I've found most compelling about this temporary switch is that in only a couple of days in this subject (on Facebook) I feel like I already got to know some of my classmates. This is so much more than I ever experienced in taking six subjects at CSU using the Interact system. Using Facebook is so much more personal, even with just the use of profile pictures. I can not only "see" who I am talking to, but I can see the whole thread of the conversations are laid out in a more useful way than the Interact forums (I'm not a big fan of Interact). I finally feel (after six subject) that I am part of a group.