del.icio.us

The primary tags used in the three resources I selected to start off this exercise were essentially "social media", "tagging", "socialbookmarking" (as one tag as well as two separate tags), "Web 2.0", "enterprise" (also, "enterprise 2.0"), "folksonomy", and "collaboration." I, unfortunately, only used the tags of "bell246" and "Exercise5" and did not feel right going back & adding new tags as I had undoubtedly already been influenced by the tags that others used. Oops.

For the next part of the exercise I selected "tagging" from one of the first three resources &, in doing so, came across a resource about organizing iTunes. I'm relatively unaware of most of the options I have with iTunes so it seemed as good a resource as any & joined my bookmark library.

In browsing through the tags of another user I felt like I was somehow snooping but quickly got over that feeling as the whole point of del.icio.us is to find & bookmark resources that are relevant to my information needs & a good majority of that process involves seeing what others have bookmarked as well as the tags they've used to classify their resources.

I came across a couple of classmates' bookmarks during the exercise & selected a resource about using Microsoft Office & Google Docs together. I use both of these resources yet, just as with iTunes, know that I am largely unaware of all that I can do with these tools so it too joined my ever-increasing collection.

Using popular tags & other peoples' tags to find additional resources clearly enables users to discover many useful & interesting resources that they might have very well otherwise missed. Ridiculous that it is, I personally enjoy seeing how many other users have bookmarked the same resources I've selected & tend to feel somewhat disappointed if my bookmarks lean towards the less popular. As a result of this exercise I've also decided that I'm going to start adding additional tags to the weekly resources I select as up to this point I've only been using the required tags. Time to delve a little deeper into del.icio.us.