Week 6: Thing 13

I'm curious about why del.icio.us was chosen as the name. I find it incredibly awkward, but there are side benefits. After looking at the site several times over the course of several days, I can spell delicious. All I have to do now is find my 4th grade teacher who told us "they easy way to remember the difference between dessert and desert is that desert has 1 s like sand, and dessert has 2 like delisious (sic)" and tell her of my discovery.

After spending more time on blogger, flickr, and now del.icio.us, I'm starting to think that "Web 2.0" really should be "Web 2.0: Good-bye to Privacy." Should everything be shared with everyone else? Are we really living in such a reality tv show world, that nothing should be kept to yourself? Nothing? Feel free to search for pregnant porn. There are a lot of people willing to share their favorite sites with the world.

In the book The Wisdom of Crowds (blah blah blah) the author states that the decision by a group is better than the decision by any one individual. When we apply this theory to del.icio.us for research purposes, we have more minds finding and tagging things that could be useful. The list that I make as an individual is going to be shorter than the list made by us.

I'm already happy collecting my bookmarks on my personalised google homepage. I already spend more than enough time online. Do I really need to look at thousands of bookmarks from thousands of strangers?

Libraries can take advantage of it by sharing sites they've used and liked. If I find a great craft site and share it with other Youth Services Librarians, I could be saving other hours of useless searching.