The del.icio.us Double Dip
del.icio.us took two more steps towards world domination in the last two days without me noticing. First, by recommendations and then by adding site-wide search. Ummmm . . . wow.
The recommendation engine apparently works in two ways, either you can see similar tags to the one you’ve chosen, or recommended links. The search engine is pretty much what you’d imagine. Up until now you could only search your own links, now you can search site-wide. Sweet.
There’s much more to say on why I care about this, but I’m really tired and I have laundry to get out of the dryer. I will leave you with one thought, however. Isn’t it funny how del.icio.us is building a so-called social networking site from the ground up. First it’s just this thing to add your bookmarks, and slowly more and more social features are added. Soon you’ve built a real community around things people care about and they actually have a desire to do the whole “Friendster thing,” see the connections, meet new people, etc. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, social networking is about content.
And now I’m off to the laundry room . . .
Update (8/15 — about three minutes after I posted this the first time): First thing, I don’t think I’ve ever said “social networking about content” and that’s because it’s a gross overstatement and doesn’t make all that much sense. I have talked in the past about how social networking is not a primary activity, and is better off being built around the framework of a relevant activity. In the case of del.icio.us, that relevant activity happens to be collecting content, however, I don’t think this is necessarily true across the board. I do, however, think it’s time for me to go to bed before I say anything else stupid.