A New Fan of Delicious

At this point in the semester, I have not been able to fully appreciate the value of Delicious.  In theory I can understand why social bookmarking is helpful, but I have realized that despite adding a few extra websites of interest, I have not actually referred to my Delicious account as a way of navigating to those sites.  Instead, I still use the Favorites tab on my own laptop.  I have also discussed Delicious with my family and found that a few of them have tried it but have not used it consistently. 

However, as I completed the tasks for Exercise 5, I gained some new insight into why Delicious and social bookmarking has created their own niche within web 2.0 tools.  Through this exercise I learned about the social aspects of bookmarking, such as being able to click on the number of people that have tagged a certain item.  From there I could select individual users and that is where I began to fall in love with Delicious.  I found that I could really gain a sense of users' personalities and interests.  I could also find individuals who share similarities with me, such as a love of cooking, shopping and music. 

To some I understand that this may all seem so obvious and you may be asking yourself why it took me so long to gain a full grasp of what Delicious offers.  I think that just goes to show that you get out of Web 2.0 tools what you put into them.  I can read about the features offered by a certain tool but if I do not take the time to actually explore it myself, I will never be abe to make an informed decision on whether or not it is worthwhile to me.