Social Bookmarking

Web 2.0 is considered the “read/write web”, in which people are participating in the web and are creating content and posting it to the web. The “semantic web” is a part of, but not equal to, web 2.0. Web 2.0 applications are served to users and these services are expected to replace the desktop computing applications. It’s also highly interactive (comprised of user-generated content) and are modular (which means developers and users can customize usage of applications).

Web 2.0 is generally characterized as a sharing of content and ideas through an open-source environment. This environment also enables social networking, as “smart” applications use knowledge of us to meet our needs and bring communities of various thinkers together.

Blogs are good examples of web 2.0 applications since they are comprised of user-generated content, use fully online-based web applications, allows users to perform quick and easy content creation, and can run from casual to professional blogs (such as timorielly.com).

Wikis are low-barrier (not difficult) examples of web 2.0 applications. They allow commenting, editing, versioning, collaborating, and can be syndicated and subscribed to while allowing back-links and community-policing. Stemming from the wiki are meta-wikis, which simply put, are wikis that focus on wikis.

The wiki and blog are similar, yet distinct in several ways. A wiki can be a blog, but a blog doesn’t necessarily have to be a wiki. Wikis promote content over form, which means they do not appear to be very attractive, but are informative nevertheless. On the other hand, blogs promote form over content; it therefore is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but doesn’t always have the best information. One similarity, however, is that both have track backs, allow comments and syndication, and are collaborative by enabling the sharing of blogs.

The academia has increasingly used web 2.0 applications as effective teaching methods for students. Web 2.0 applications, as they promote social networking, are also ideal for group projects and online research.

With this social networking formed from web 2.0 applications, folksonomy is born – that is, tagging by cataloguing to create a user-generated system of classification of searches. Tagging enables viewers to extract out the weak choices in search of appropriate bookmarks, photos, articles, websites, products, and/or product reviews.

Tagging marks the new phenomena of social bookmarking in which bookmarks of users share their personal bookmarks with the rest of with the online community; usually, a viewer bookmarking can comment via social bookmarking websites such as delicious, technorati, and diggit. After a cluster of tags increases more people tag a particular phrase, word, or number, the a tag cloud forms and becomes larger. Tags are all hot-links, thus enabling a viewers to see all other sites tagged by anyone with the same tag as theirs (this can be up to the thousands).

Another type of web 2.0 activity is photo-sharing, usually shown by a community that tags image collections using community-driven terms. Flickr, for instance, has more specified tages labeling the date, camera type, time, and other characteristics that describe the situation the picture was taken. Similarly, video-sharing sites are now prominent, the most popular being youtube.com. They serve as a place for viewers to post videos without having to buy space, bandwidth, and having immense technological skill.

RSS, or real simple syndication, is a feature of many web 2.0 applications which allows for subscriptions so users may effectively share content; it is a “pull technology”, which users can choose to accept. On the other hand, the “push technology” which are features that are basically “imposed” on the user, such as spam e-mail bombarding his/her inbox.

Web 2.0 also includes the concept of narrow casting, in which the application can cater to the needs of varying audiences, and the user can choose to which audience he/she can share the information with. This is a popular feature for corporate broadcasting.

Other examples of web 2.0 applications are Facebook, in which tagging and networking are available, and Myspace - a site primarily popular among teens and contain customizable blogs and playlists. Digg is a social bookmarking application that allows the viewer to look at links, as well as voting on the site by tagging.

Website building has also become more web 2.0-oriented, allowing for user-friendly features that enable almost anyone with basic computer- and Internet-knowledge to create we site. Almost all of the web 2.0 apps are free, or at least include a free basic feature.

Virtual worlds are a developing feature of web 2.0 as well, the most popular being “Second Life”. This is an international, multi-user system in which the viewer creates an avatar and can manipulate it to even have almost superhuman qualities.

A feature that make web 2.0 possible is broadband, which establishes fast connections. In addition, distributed or grid computing causes major computer systems to work together to make dynamic, interactive, community-based application possible.

From examining web 2.0, social bookmarking is indeed a “democratic taxonomy that allows the community to peer review the content of the Web”. I do not see how it can be disorganized at all; this is possibly the most organized the web can get until we fully achieve a 100% web 2.0 application that is globally-used and covers multiple disciplines. Many of the early web 2.0 applications are “democratic” as they allow the community to give comments, rate on choices, vote on topics, and even collaborate on a single project – which can be from sharing a blog to sharing a virtual world together. The Web is an endless seam of possibilities and an great outlet for personal expression; it is constantly evolving, and welcomes new ideas, formats, concepts, and levels of interactivity with the user and among multiple communities.

The sites I tagged are more like introductory websites to various topics that would be discussed throughout the MSPTC program. I therefore tagged sites discussing typography, color, CSS style sheets, Dreamweaver, etc., to make it useful not just for myself but for my fellow classmates.

The potential benefit of students and professionals using social bookmarking is that new ideas are shared as new websites, blogs, and other web 2.0 applications emerge. The only downside, however, is that for a very limited period of time, these bookmarked sites may serve as the “standard norm” of “appropriate” ideas for a certain discipline. In other words, for only a brief moment, new ideas may not be welcome until a revolution of new ideas arrive by the emergence of new sites.