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  • Are your bookmarks Delicious?

    By Eric Stoller August 6, 2010 4:15 am EDT

    I have been using Delicious.com as my social bookmarking service for more than 2 years. It has become an indispensable tool in my online toolkit. I have more than 2,500 bookmarks and almost 500 unique tags in my account. If Yahoo, the current owner of Delicious, ever decided to charge a fee for the service, I would gladly pay whatever they asked. Delicious is my online memory. I use it on a daily basis to keep track of web sites that I come across while surfing the web. It is probably the most important web service that I use on the web...and that's saying quite a bit about its utility.

    Why is Delicious so useful?

    • Availability: Unlike browser-based "favorites" or "bookmarks" that are dependent on a single computer or device, Delicious bookmarks are accessible via any web-enabled device. I can even access my bookmarks on my new Droid X smartphone. My bookmarks follow me around instead of forcing me to be tethered to a single computer.
    • Tags: When you bookmark a URL in Delicious, you have the opportunity to add a tag or multiple tags to the Delicious entry. Tags are a great way to sort, share and find your bookmarks. You can easily go into your Delicious account and find your bookmarks. I often use tags to organize events that I'm speaking at...After I am done giving my talk, I can share the link to the specific resources that I mentioned in my presentation.
    • Network / Sharing: The social aspect of Delicious is amazing. Add your friends to your Delicious network and you can see the resources that they have bookmarked and vice versa. I have found many useful web sites via the bookmarks of my Delicious network.
    • RSS: Delicious creates RSS feeds for every tag in your account. These custom feeds can be imported into a blog, a Facebook page, a Yahoo Pipe, etc. I use an embedded Yahoo Pipe to create a custom set of links, via a Delicious RSS tag feed, to share pre-med information with my advisees.
    • Linkrolls: Delicious provides a nifty way of embedding bookmarks on a webpage via "Linkrolls."

    Are you using Delicious? I would love to know all about the creative ways in which you are using this wonderful service.

    Do you tweet? Follow me on Twitter.

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Comments on Are your bookmarks Delicious?

  • Diigo: More Delicious
  • Posted by Jeff Ruth , Modern Languages at East Stroudsburg University (PA) on August 6, 2010 at 5:45am EDT

  • Diigo.com has a social bookmark service that may have been inspired by Delicious but at this point leaves Delicious in the dust, absolutely. It's got features that are tailored for academics, as well. Unbelievable that Delicious remains the only such service that people seem to talk about! Give it a shot.

  • Use Delicious Instructionally
  • Posted by Britt Watwood , Center for Teaching Excellence at VCU on August 6, 2010 at 8:45am EDT

  • Agree with all you say. I have been using Delicious for several years and have thousands of websites bookmarked. It is equally important in the graduate class I teach. By using a unique tag and adding my students to my network, we can share resources we collectively find that add value to our class.

  • agreed!
  • Posted by Lulu Kaliher , complex coordinator - Office of Residence Life at University of Delaware on August 6, 2010 at 10:30am EDT

  • I agree with you Eric on how I use Delicious. I came to Delicious after years of frustrations of losing my bookmarks between computers (due to replacement or failure). Now I can access my bookmarks anywhere but I love the tagging feature. I used it to find resources while working on my dissertation. I enjoyed the online community source of sharing it provides.

  • Use delicious constantly
  • Posted by Lori Winterfeldt , Adjunct at Queens College on August 6, 2010 at 11:00am EDT

  • Use this resource for the last few years CONSTANTLY and find it extremely useful in all my projects. Love that I can be on any computer/device and access it.

    It's fabulous!

  • Librarians use delicious
  • Posted by Laurie , Library at Oregon State University on August 6, 2010 at 3:00pm EDT

  • I keep a delicious page just for business bookmarks. I've been keeping it since 2006. In March of 2007 my bookmarks were named as one of the best business resources by the Information Today Biz Newsletter. I was shocked, "Really? My bookmarks?" Whenever I show them to students, I get evaluations back expressing how much students liked being introduced to delicious.

  • Use it for search
  • Posted by Philippe on August 7, 2010 at 6:30am EDT

  • It's an overlooked use case but delicious is pretty good for search too. I often use it instead of Google. What makes it good is that people generally only bookmark sites that they find valuable. So when you search for your term - the sites that get returned and usually quite useful

  • Thank You, Eric...And Jeff Ruth, Too
  • Posted by Art Esposito , Director, Discovery (undeclared) Advising at Virginia Commonwealth University, University College on August 8, 2010 at 9:00am EDT

  • Eric, I'm totally blown away at how you manage to elevate the tone of conversation about Web 2.0 in Academia. Thanks again for another excellent post. And Jeff Ruth, I suspect the reason Delicious gets all the air time is because it was one of the earliest sites doing this. Diigo, I'm certain, is fantastic. But I'm equally certain I, nor many others who were on Delicious first, don't have the time or energy to switch my thousands of bookmarks over at this point. Thank you, as well, for reminding everyone that we "live" in an on-line world replete with tools and options.

  • Love Making My Own Link Taxonomy
  • Posted by Kristen on August 8, 2010 at 3:15pm EDT

  • Using Delicious has changed how I use the Internet completely. Before Delicious, links were stuck locally or sent in emails so I'd have them "when I got home" to finish a grad school paper. My Delicious Networking includes my grad school profs and fellow students. Searching my network or Delicious often yields more interesting results than the average Google Search. Great post, I hope more people get on board with it.

  • My other usage of Delicious Besides Research
  • Posted by Kristen F at Southern New Hampshire Univeristy Online on August 8, 2010 at 3:15pm EDT

  • Sorry, forgot to add that when I get a new web design client, I'll start to tag sites appropriate for the client (same genre, style, theme) and then send them the link to those tagged items. The client can check them out and note what they like or don't like. It becomes an idea generator for them or discussion launch point for us.

  • Haven't Used Bookmarks for Years
  • Posted by Terry Calhoun , Director of Social Media and Publications at Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) on August 9, 2010 at 11:00am EDT

  • As Mark Milliron shared with our plenary session at SCUP-45, Albert Einstein claimed to never memorize anything that he could look up inside of two minutes.
    It's been years since looking up a bookmark I had created was faster for me than just finding something via a quick search. I think we can update Einstein on this, "Never memorize anything you can look up in 10 seconds."

  • textbook bookmarks
  • Posted by Doug Ferguson on August 10, 2010 at 10:30am EDT

  • Sometimes the best link is on the third or fourth page of a Google search, so bookmarks are essential. This is especially true for those of us who need to revise textbooks on fast-changing topics. I save my bookmarked links by chapter number. Then, when I need all those updates for a revision, they're sorted in one place. Moreover, I can share my chapter links on Delicious to my author website that supports current users of the textbook. To that end, I use ping.fm to simultaneously update my Delicious bookmarks and my Twitter feed that followers of the textbook can read.

  • Delicious + Twitter = Productivity
  • Posted by Catherine Cronin , Academic Coordinator, MScSED (online) at National University of Ireland, Galway on August 11, 2010 at 3:30pm EDT

  • Great post, Eric - thank you. I agree with most other comments, Delicious has improved my productivity enormously over the past couple of years. The combination of Delicious and Twitter is especially powerful. When I come across useful links on Twitter, I tag them in Delicious. When it comes time to develop a new course, revise an existing course, or begin a new project, I have a collection of useful resources to begin with. Much of my research is done!

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