I have had a diigo account since last semester and have used it a couple of times. It is used for social bookmarking both for individuals and groups. Thus, last Wednesday in class, I registered as a member for technorati, stumbleupon, digg, and delicious to learn how to use it.
The overall feature of Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which Shantanu said in his blog may not be as easy as its name, is that it works as an aggregator to collect links in which we’re interested in at one place. We can register any Web sites that provide an RSS feed feature. RSS provides storage efficiency in cyberspace because it will copy only links without contents but when those Web sites are updated, RSS will automatically update those links to the latest ones. Thus, for example when we login to delicious, we can click links that we have had saved and go to the last updated page of that link directly. In this way, it seems like we can pull information that we are interested within one place without searching many Web sites. All you want is in one place. Most RSS Web sites provide categories such as news or video which we can search and then we can keep our favorite links in separate folders.
I have started to use these Web sites in the class and have tried to use them several times after that. I felt so confused when I used them for the first time. These tools look easy but I did not know how to use them at first glance. I will summarize them to you as follows:
technorati
I’m not sure what this Web is used for but I found one interesting feature. I went to my account and chose tab Blogs and I added two claimed blogs. One is kate.sisatspace.com and another one in Myspace.com. Here are the results:
I blog, therefore I am.
- Rank: 795679
Goal Inter
http://gazeenter.spaces.live.com
No authority yet
- Rank: 4052146
As my blog in SISATSpace has some people refering to it, my rank here is better than in Myspace.com. However, my ranking for kate.sisatspace.com is not quite good enough. I have had 109 blog reactions to kate.sisatspace.com. Unbelievable!! JFor technorati, I have learned to use only this. I want to know more about this Web site. If you know how to use it for other features, please give me suggestions.
stumbleupon
I downloaded the toolbar, installed it, and followed the steps of Prof. Olfman and Shantanu. I chose Internet, Internet-tools, and guitar. I mostly tried three buttons: Stumble!, I like it!, and I don’t like it. I do like that this Web site can bring me to many interesting Web sites that I think I couldn’t find by myself. J As I chose three categories, stumbleupon took me to each Web site that it recommended in each category and start over from the first category again. I am wondering about the algorithm behind this Web. How can it know which Web site it should recommend to us? I feel sometimes it suggests an interesting Web site but when I clicked I like it, it took me to a boring Web site that was very different from the last one. In conclusion, I do like this Web site but the main disadvantage is that if I use a public computer that doesn’t have the stumbleupon toolbar, it could not use these features.
digg
I found some problems when I logged in to digg.com. Sometimes it doesn’t show a text box to enter a username and password. Sometimes, I can’t log in at all. I’m not sure whether it depends on which computer I use because I use computers at several different places. These difficulties in logging in makes me not like this Web that much. I also feel that the user interface of this Web confused me when I use it.This Web provides news, video, and podcasts categories. I do not know why they use the word digg instead of dig. Digg, diggs, and dugg that this Web uses as regular terms confuses the MS-Word spell check when I write in this blog. I can search the categories that I want and when I’m interested in a link, I can digg it or bury it. When I digg it, it automatically saves it in my account. I also can read comments, add comments, blog and email it, and see who else blogged or dugg it. Moreover, each link that you dugg provides information such as how many people digg this link, how many comments so far, who submitted it, and how long this link has been submitted. I also can undigg it whenever I want.
delicious
I do not like the color that this Web uses. I find it difficult to use because of the gray color. So, it may not be delicious for my eyes. J This Web site provides your favorites, your network, subscriptions, links for you, and post. I can choose what tags I am interested in and it provides tags and tag options. Each link provides information such as how many people saved it. Although I do not like the color of this Web site, I feel it is easier to use than digg. However, I do like the feature about adding comments, blogging it, and seeing who else blogged or dugg it in digg much more than delicious.
Conclusion
I spent time several days, a couple hours per day, to play with these tools. I think they are quite interesting and useful for me. I plan to use them from now on but am not sure how intensely I will use them. Most Web sites now provide a button to add them to digg, technorati, delicious, and stumbleupon. Thus, it’s very convenient for Internet users to add their favorite links to their accounts in these Web sites. However, one thing that I notice is that each Web site provides me different links although I use the same keywords to search for my interesting Web sites. Thus, one advantage is that it’s good that we register for many Web sites to see what is different among them, but one disadvantage is that I need to log on to several Web sites and I am lazy about doing that. Moreover, when I use some of these Web sites such as stumbleupon and diigo without their toolbars, it is not convenient at all.