He gets Del.icio.us

Friday a colleague of mine wrote to tell me that he is using Del.icio.us. He said:

Cool system. I never realized...

We have gotten into the habit of saving URLs in our Internet browsers as bookmarks or favorites, then emailing specific URLs to colleagues, when necessary. But what if you'd like to share a growing list of URLs with your colleagues and don't want the email hassle? Or -- as my friend is doing -- you want to have URLs saved someplace where you can access them, no matter what computer you are using? That's when a tool like Del.icio.us comes in handy.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that allows you to save, organize (via tags) and share your bookmarks with anyone. If you'd like for your bookmarks to become part of your web site (and be updated automatically), you can use the link roll feature. Here is my link roll on "podcast":




If you saved a well vetted list of URLs on a specific topic, then the link roll would be a painless way of integrating that list on your web site. Any organization could benefit from this feature.

You can also have your recently saved URLs displayed in your blog (as a blog post) automatically. There are several people, that I know, who do this, perhaps as a way of further keeping track or -- or sharing -- the URLs.

When I began using Del.icio.us, I thought it was cute, but really couldn't see a need for it. Then I began working on a project where I needed to share bookmarks on podcasting. And then I found others that could benefit from those bookmarks. Lo and behold, I had found a use for Del.icio.us and it worked perfectly!

I've said it once, and I'll keep saying it...you have to have a reason (need) why you use these different tools. If you have a need, then you'll use and benefit from the tool. If you don't have a need, then the tool will be useless to you.