Table of Contents
One of the fundamental challenges of using the Web is keeping found things found, whether it be at the basic level of simple URLs or other digital content such as images and data sets. Social bookmarking has arisen to be a popular solution to this problem. According to “7 things you should know about social bookmarking,”[220]bookmark or favorite, which is a URL stored by the user. You can try to manage these URLs in the browser by storing them as favorites or bookmarks. Social bookmarking involves storing one’s references online and making bookmarking a collaborative process.
There are several reasons for using social bookmarking:
To keep track of interesting items (URLs) you find on the Web in the hopes you will be able to find them again. This process is nicely described as “keeping found things found” by the words of a research project.[221]
To have basic metadata or citation information about bookmarks, including metadata about the item so that you can cite the item and tell others about these items.
To find materials that are similar to what you already have. The ability to find more and related materials is a major reason for the existence of social bookmarking. You can certainly save bookmarks in your own browser. Of course, you can just copy down the URL, paste it in a Word document, and drop the document in an e-mail message, but doing so either keeps this information to yourself or keeps it to just a select group of friends. Social bookmarks put the focus on sharing bookmarks with others so that others can find and learn from you. Tagging is widely used to forge connections among disparate sources. (Think about applying this to all we talked about in Chapter 3.)
Social bookmarking is an area in flux. At http://www.irox.de/file_download/3 you can find a helpful chart (from 2006) comparing features of 19 systems. Wikipedia also has a list of social bookmarking sites,[222][223]
Social bookmarking is of further interest in the context of this book because of the extensibility/remixability being built into these systems. Social bookmarks also lend insight into other systems. For instance, del.icio.us, the granddaddy of social bookmarking sites, is generally credited with kicking off the latest wave of social, or folksonomic, tagging, which has taken many Web 2.0 sites by storm.
This chapter does the following:
Provides an overview of the social bookmarking landscape
Walks through a select set of social bookmarking systems: del.icio.us, Yahoo!’s MyWeb 2.0, and Connotea
Walks through the APIs, focusing in detail on del.icio.us (which is influential and the model for other social bookmarking sites) and then comparing it to those of Yahoo! and Connotea
Discusses how you can use the del.icio.us API to enhance Flickr through a mashup of the two web sites
As mentioned, there are a lot of social bookmarking sites. A reasonable approach is to focus on del.icio.us, the one to which all other social bookmarking systems are compared. Moreover, del.icio.us has an API, and there is much to learn from it.
Here are some other social bookmarking sites I will mention and examine briefly:
Yahoo! MyWeb 2.0 and Bookmarks because Yahoo! is pursuing these properties despite already owning del.icio.us. Functionally, Yahoo! MyWeb allows you to store pages and to use the Yahoo! identity network, a major social network.
Connotea is a more scholarly social bookmarking site. Connotea is backed up by Nature Publishing, and therefore it’s likely to have some longevity.
A good way to figure out what to focus on is to see what is listed on Programmableweb.com—and to focus on the systems that actually have APIs. Go to the following location, and look for services that are in the Bookmarks category:
http://www.programmableweb.com/apilist/bycat
As of August 11, 2007, they are as follows:
del.icio.us
Simpy
Blogmarks
Scribble
Shadows
Jots
Rrove
OnlyWire
linkaGoGo
Ma.gnolia
Table 14-1 sorts them by mashup count.[224]
| API | Description | Category | Mashups |
| del.icio.us Social bookmarking Bookmarks 83 | |||
| Ma.gnolia Social bookmarking service Bookmarks 4 | |||
| Shadows Social bookmarking and community Bookmarks 2 | |||
| Simpy Social bookmarking Bookmarks 1 | |||
| Rrove Social bookmarking for places; create and share maps Bookmarks 1 | |||
| Jots Social bookmarking Bookmarks 1 | |||
The fact that del.icio.us has an order of magnitude more mashup activity than the rest of bookmark services combined is why we’re focusing on del.icio.us.