Thing 19 - Introduction to Social Bookmarking

Just when I started feeling overwhelmed with how to organize all that I am learning, along comes Thing 19 to put me back on top of my technology heap! My computer bookmarks are cumbersome (especially since there are multiple users on my home computer who lack an inclination toward organizing bookmarks) and my school computer bookmarks are eliminated each summer when the computers are ghosted. So just when I can't figure out where to put all of the sites that I want to return to, practice more, and keep for something I will need later...social networking sets up a practical solution for sorting it all out and accessing it at anytime from any computer.

Tagging seems like the missing element from my current single focus folder system of organization. Tagging lets overlaps occur for sites that serve more than one purpose for me, finds connections with other users' valued sites, and allows for quick access based on a content word. All of these are advantages over scanning my long list of bookmarks on my computer. It is important to think of the most succinct and complete words that describe my preferred sites in order to assign it a good tag. Noticing the tags of other users will probably help me to recognize useful and prevalent tags. Some disadvantages of tagging were made clear in the article stating 13 guidelines. Knowing the proper formatting is important and not innate for me. It looks like it will take some time investigating others tags to have a strong sense of how to tag sites. Working with a larger community also means that it is likely that I will encounter false leads when my sense of a tag's definition may not match another's definition. Finally, being a creature comfortable in privacy it is again a stretch to become part of a larger community but I am curious what others will find related to my "keeper" sites and I value the shortcut available by being connected to someone else's sites related to my tags. All in all this is probably going to be a great asset but it looks like I need Thing 20 in order to become more familiar with all that social bookmarking has to offer.