Understanding Social Bookmarketing and Delicious
By S. Housley

Delicious is a social bookmarking system, that is notable,
not only for its unusual web address http://del.icio.us , but
for its unusual approach to content building that is
becoming increasingly popular. In order to ease the burden
of producing consistent stream of fresh content, publishers
are turning to users to build, categorize and qualify
content. While this is said to be part of the web 2.0
phenomenon, publishers realize the value of collaboration.

Social bookmarking allows users to qualify content. With
Delicious, each "bookmark" of a specific webpage is seen as
a vote of confidence. The more people who bookmark a
specific webpage, the more credible the webpage is viewed.

In addition to bookmarking a webpage, users "tag" the
webpage. The tags are simply single word keywords that
relate to the contents of the webpage. The tagging
associates keywords with the webpage's content, making it
easier to categorize and classify the content of the
webpage. If everyone bookmarking a page uses similar keyword
tags, the webpage will be classified as a credible resource
in a specific category.

As a webpage receives more and more bookmarks from different
Delicious users, the listing for the webpage becomes more
prominent in the Delicious listings. Delicious users can
bookmark and tag multiple pages within a website. Content
can be tagged with multiple terms. As more users tag the
content, it becomes easier to find similar topics.



How to Use Delicious:

1. Create a Delicious Account
In order to create a Delicious account, you will need to
provide a valid e-mail address, login name and password.


2. Verify an Account
An e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address provided when
the Delicious account was created. You will need to click
the link in the e-mail in order to fully activate the
Delicious account.


3. Login
Login in to the Delicious account in order to begin
bookmarking and tagging content.


4. Post URL
Enter the URL of a webpage or website that you find to be
particularly valuable or useful.


5. Describe & Tag
Enter a descriptive page title and description that relates
to the contents of the bookmarked webpage. In the final
field enter single word keywords that relate to the webpages
content, these will be the "tags".


Why Use Delicious?
Delicious can be used by professionals to share industry
resources that are particularly useful. Delicious users
store their favorite websites or resources online and other
users can easily access bookmarks. Often websurfers will use
Delicious to find resources that they consider to be
relevant and qualified.


Delicious also takes advantage of RSS. RSS feeds can be used
to syndicate user bookmarks or to aggregate content with the
same tags. Generating RSS feeds allows users to syndicate
bookmarks or to aggregate content that contains related
tags. Users can also syndicate bookmarks that are created by
other users using RSS feeds.


Bookmarks
Many users generate bookmarks that are all related as in
this case of bookmarks all related to RSS:
http://del.icio.us/rssfeeds or the RSS feed of the same
bookmarks at: http://del.icio.us/rss/rssfeeds


Other user bookmarks don't encompass a single theme as is
the case with the following:
http://del.icio.us/oreck or the RSS feed of the same
bookmarks at: http://del.icio.us/rss/oreck


As publishers struggle to create unique content, they are
turning towards web surfers to qualify and categorize
content. As a result social-bookmarking is becoming more
prevalent as users weigh-in.


About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a
wireless text messaging software company.