Understanding del.icio.us tagging

Like Technorati, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. In fact,Technorati picks up some of its tagging information from del.icio.us, but del.icio.us doesn't provide any interface for web sites themselves to provide tag info for specific pages other than a confusing API that seems more designed for reading than informing. They provide a way to "claim" a website, but it is much more complicated and difficult than Technorati's simple and rather foolproof scheme.

What del.icio.us does provide is an easy to use bookmarking system. After installion (just saving a bookmark) you simply choose the "Remember This" bookmark for any page to want to tag. That brings you to a del.icio.us page where you fill in the tags and any extended notes you want to keep on the page you bookmarked. That's it; it couldn't be any more simple.

Your del.icio.us bookmarks (available from your ordinary bookmarks, of course) are organized by the tags you choose. That's nothing you can't do with folders and ordinary bookmarks, but most browsers don't make it easy to file things under multiple categories, which of course with del.icio.us is as easy as typing multiple tags. For example, you might tag this post as "tagging technorati aplawrence.com folksonomy" (assuming you found it memorable enough to bother tagging at all). Presto, instant organization, and you can also go look at every other bookmark that del.icio.us users have filed under "folksonomy" or whatever.

Although not of interest to me, there's a similar service for photos; Technorati indexes that also.

Psst - Wanna work for yourself?

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