Why I Really Love Delicious

As a daily web surfer since 1998, I have encountered almost innumerable webpages, many of which I wish to record or revisit. Without a robust and scalable solution, I would not be able to easily store and retrieve online resources essential to my career and personal life. For the past four years, I have used Delicious for my web bookmarks.

I use Delicious almost exclusively for my bookmarks as it offers me superior classification flexibility compared to tree-based bookmarking systems and it offers memory aids unequaled by search engines. I previously blogged about my Delicious usage. But in short, I tend to create 75 bookmarks a month on Delicious and visit their website about 2-3 times a week. Less frequently, I also use it to aid my sharing of webpages, to connect with similar bookmarkers, and to find new information.

But it is not just the utility or social networking that has garnered such devotion in me. I was wondering why I really love Delicious, so I tried to think more consciously and reflectively of my usage for a few days.

I noticed that I bookmarked not only for future retrieval but also as a form of nostalgic memory aid. I bookmark to recall life events such as family vacations, conferences attended and experiences, such as humourous findings and my bizarre interests. My bookmarks are my version of photo album and diary.

My Delicious bookmarking also fosters a sense of control. Not only are there seemingly infinite numbers of webpages to manage, but I also have many topics my career requires me to master. Faithfully bookmarking allows me to feel that these resources and the information contained therein is within my domain, readily within my grasp.

Delicious' interface is certainly simple and their browser plug-in makes using it even simpler. But it is Delicious' functionality that hooks me by being so well-suited to allowing me to obsessively grow (over 3400 bookmarks) and control this element of my life.

Delicious Numbers

I'm working on a mini-paper that examines my usage of the social bookmarking tool, Delicious. I've blogged before (Quality Ingredients Make Bookmarks Delicious) on my great love and admiration for Delicious. Beyond that, I haven't really put the microscope - or calculator - to my usage.

I assembled a few of my usage stats which I think reveals patterns to my behaviour. They may be of interest only to me, but I do think they qualify me as a power user.

My Delicious Stats:

• Months of membership: 47
• Bookmarks: 3475
• Average bookmarks per month: 74
  
• Tags: 698
• Tags used only once: 95 (I like highly-specific tags, but clearly I need to prune)
  
• Untagged bookmarks: 14 (some how I missed these as I always try to find some tag)
  
• Tag Bundles: 16
  
• Unbundled tags: 20 (haven't rounded up the scragglers for awhile)
  
• Average number of tags in a bundle: 59 (range is from 7 to 281)
  
• Users in my network: 20 (I don't network very much)
• My fans: 8 (no one appreciates my genius)
• #1 tag: "net news" with 637 bookmarks (I use it for my news feed here on the right)
• #2 tag: "web accessibility", 208 (a research interest and subject of my MA thesis)
• #3 tag: "Toronto", 204 (I love my city)
• #4 tag: "web 2.0", 177 (even I'm sick of this term)
• #5 tag: "Internet" 140

In the past six months:

• Bookmarks: 421
• Average bookmarks per month: 70
• Range: 43 (February) to 121 (June - all the Foursquare research)
  
• Average number of days I bookmarked per month: 13
• Average number of bookmarks per month based on days I bookmarked: 5.2
• Average number of bookmarks per month overall: 2.3

I did a historical cross-section of the past four Mays (no special reason for selecting May) that I've been a member:

• Bookmarks for Mays: 219
  
• Average bookmarks per May: 55
  
• Range: 4 (2007) to 126 (2008)
  
• Average number of days I bookmarked per May: 10
• Average number of bookmarks per month based on days I bookmarked: 4.3
  
• Average number of bookmarks per May day overall: 1.8

I wanted to figure out my use of tags per bookmark and how many other people were bookmarking resources I bookmarked. This was time-consuming to determine, so I selected one month, April 2010, that seemed to be average in that I had no special activities or projects that month:

• Average number of tags used per resource: 2.09
• Range of number of tags used: 1 to 5
• Average number of people that bookmarked a resource I did: 83
• Range of number of people bookmarking: 0 to 1990 (the latter for Shape Collage)
  
• Number of times I was the only person ever to bookmark a resource: 26 (out of 70 for the month)
  

I also tried to examine my bookmarking for personal versus professional usage but it was too difficult to neatly classify many of them.

It appears that my usage really fluctuates depending on current projects I have or events. It does appear that I bookmark approximately once every three days and that when I do I tend to bookmark 5 items using 2 tags each. Apparently, I also bookmark a fair number of resources that no one else has found (or cares about).

And finally...

• My bookmarks using "Delicious": 24
• My bookmarks using "glenfarrelly": 68
  

Two Journal Articles of Mine Published

Last month, two essays I wrote about Internet topics for Royal Road classes were published in journals. Researching Delicious and Rotten Tomatoes (see below) was a blast and proved a fertile source for a lot of interesting stuff. Hopefully as my academic careers progresses, I'll be able to continue to write and publish on Internet topics.

I was just accepted into University of Toronto's Faculty of Information PhD program, so I think I'll have the venue and opportunity for some cool research (stay tuned).

Here are the journal article links and abstracts:

Does Rotten Tomatoes Spoil Users? Examining Whether Social Media Features Foster Participatory Culture

Participatory culture existed prior to the advent of the World Wide Web. Now, due to the increasing popularity of social media tools, participatory culture is flourishing online as well. One popular movie review website, Rotten Tomatoes, demonstrates this trend. The website includes a suite of interactive, social media tools. Based on an ethnographic observation, participatory culture was seen to be occurring on the site. The power of the website to provide an open and accessible means of cultural dialogue and to encourage civic participation can be observed particularly when online user activity moves beyond discussions of film aesthetics to encompass larger societal and cultural issues. However, despite the site’s intriguing potential, there are various flaws observed that prevent a greater flourishing of participatory culture.

On Tags and Signs: A Semiotic Analysis of Folksonomies

The practice of tagging resources on the Internet has become a popular activity on such websites as Delicious, Flickr, Technorati, CiteULike, and LibraryThing, making tagging a key method to enable online information retrieval and sharing. When tagging is done by members of the general public, it is known as a folksonomy. Folksonomies, unlike many other forms of communication, are created by individuals acting in isolation from one another and with no coordinated effort. Yet when the individual practice of tagging resources is shared openly difficulties in meaning arise, due in part to the lack of sufficient message coding and ambiguous connotations.

Delicious Gets Even Tastier With Age

It's been two years today since I started using del.icio.us and my love for the site continues to grow! Read my prior posts on the joys of the site & social bookmarking in general.

This anniversary is well timed as the web service has just been relaunched, and happily I'll never have to type that name with all the weird punctuation again as the site is now just Delicious.

The new features are mainly along the lines of increased performance, improved search, and a new design. Others have written about the changes, so rather than add to the noise on the issue, here are my Delicious bookmarks on this topic.

Delicious has always had a simplicity of design that made it a breeze to use. Things have changed a bit and like any redesign it takes old users some getting used to. But overall, it seems that things are much easier and quicker to use now. (My only beef so far, is it's now much harder to bundle unbundled tags.) It also looks classier too - less like a mess of plain text as it did before.

Considering how much I love Delicious and that it seems to be getting better, you'd think I'd be happy. But a few nights ago, I lay in bed dreading that as Delicious still doesn't seem to have a viable model for making money it could shut down. My nightmare with Delicious is Yahoo (owner of Delicious) will do what they did when they shut down Yahoo Photos and encouraged me to move my photos to Flickr. Yahoo Photos, unlike Flickr, was a great free service. Yahoo Photos let me host tons of photos and organize them into albums, etc. With Flickr, after importing all my Yahoo Photos pix there, I was horrified to learn that my old photos were now locked away from me and I can only view the most recent 200 unless I pay. I also have to pay to create more than 3 albums. Flickr basically sucks now, so I have moved onto PhotoBucket. But my old photos are dead to me on Flickr. I hope Yahoo doesn't one day do this to my Delicious bookmarks. Photos are nice to look at, but I can't live without my bookmarks!

User Tagging Effective Aid for Online Searching

Due to an ever-growing abundance of online information, there is increasing difficulty in finding useful information. Currently, most web data is coded to instruct browsers to display data, without regard for meaning. By adding metadata to denote what data means, search engines can offer more useful results. While there are limitations with metadata approaches, user tagging appears to offer the greatest potential for improving online searching.

Metadata can be split into two main types: 1) tagging – the act of appending keywords to web resources (e.g. del.icio.us, Flickr, StumbleUpon), and 2) semantic web data – coding conventions to describe the data (e.g. RDF and microformats). Metadata can be added by, or in conjunction with, four groups: 1) creators, 2) programmers, 3) information specialists, 4) users. Metadata is useful for retrieving resources already found, (e.g. del.icio.us’ use of tagging), or for filtering of content to read pertinent areas. Yet, it is the use of metadata, specifically tagging by users, to aid searching that offers the most potential.

The leading hurdle for semantic web data is its highly technical nature, which limits use primarily to advanced web developers. Two XML/XHMTL solutions, RDF or microformats, are too advanced for many web developers, let alone lay web users. As a veteran web developer, I found the syntax of both to be intimidating. Until web-authoring software simplifies adding semantic data, it will remain a good idea left largely unimplemented.

There are essentially two limitations with the use of metadata by information specialists. For one, there is far too much web content to address. Yahoo, for example, abandoned a manual process as too time-consuming and costly. Secondly, while information specialists are good at classifying resources based on official schema or taxonomies, which work well in smaller environments such as an intranet, their work may not necessarily address the needs and lexicon of users in a wider community.

Tagging by content creators also faces the limitation that the creators do not fully know users’ needs and lexicon, even though they know the content well. In addition, tagging by content creators offers the opportunity for abuse – both intentional and unintentional. Unintentional abuse can derive from ignorance of standards, lack of accurate self-appraisal, or cultural or language differences. Abuse can also be intentional, as typified by spammers and phishers who use false metadata to lure people to their sites.

Tagging by content users offers the most potential for web searchers. Group tagging draws on the theory of the wisdom of crowds, wherein collective action by a diverse group results in better information than even specialists could provide. When a resource is tagged by a sufficient array of users, it overcomes minor discrepancies and represents what the resource actually means to most users. Users know the terms they associate with a resource and can use their own words to identify it; they are not apt to misidentify for selfish gain. Also, most tagging services are free, and they are quick and easy to use, compared to semantic web data.

Tagging services are not yet standard offerings in browsers and require time to learn, which may be why these services lack widespread adoption. However, as more and more users tag web resources, this situation will improve and will offer even more aid to web searchers.

Delicious questions I can sink my teeth into

My current course is covering tagging this week. As such, I posted this blog's prior del.icio.us primer to my class forum. There were two responses that offer interesting concerns about usefulness and safety of del.icio.us.

Value of del.icio.us
From S.C.:

I used to be a information junkie and file folder fanatic, the literal sort, collecting information in case I ever needed it. But then I realized that I was a collector and not a user, so I threw away my files and downsized my cabinet ... all except my favorite ten. So this phenomenon really intrigues me and would love to know how the info that is tagged gets used, as opposed to collected.

My response:
First, I agree that a lot of people tag things on del.icio.us that they will in all likelihood never retrieve again. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

For one, conventional tree-system bookmarking via your browser gets limited very fast, particularly if you have a lot of bookmarks, bookmarks hard to classify, or, like me, you think more in terms of keywords rather than rigid classification structures. Even if you only return to very few of your bookmarks, knowing you can find them again fairly easy is worth the effort. Of course, if you're fairly good at googling you can retrieve things that way - but sometimes I forget everything about a bookmark, except a vague sense of the topic, so keyword tagging is great for that. Also, del.icio.us gives you a search engine for your bookmarks, which no browser has.

Second, when you bookmark via del.icio.us you automatically share your bookmarks with the rest of the wired world. You can opt out of each individual tag by clicking the "do not share" option, but that defeats a lot of the value of it, which is social bookmarking. You contribute to the classification of scattered, overly-abundant online information when you tag on del.icio.us. So others can benefit from your findings and one day computers will be able to read these tags effectively and then we'll have a search engine that will probably beat Google for its accuracy.

You can do other things with your tags too. My favourite is sharing a specific tag automatically on my blog. So I get a Reuters-type feed of Internet news on my blog automatically by reading the news (as I normally do) and tagging them. A friend set up a del.icio.us account for all research by their communication team, so that they can all share their findings.

So there's lots of uses for del.icio.us even if you don't retrieve your bookmarks very often.

Privacy concerns
From S.T.:

When I show (and show off!) my del.icio.us site to my co-workers, the first question that comes back at me is 'what about security and privacy?

My response:
Security concerns would be along the lines of can someone hack into your account and if you have a good, long alphanumeric password then I wouldn't worry any more than I would when registering with any online service.

Privacy is a more complicated concern. When you bookmark on del.icio.us or many other similar sites , you are by default (which can be changed), making all your bookmarks available to the public. Furthermore, search engines index your bookmarks page and this will bring more exposure to your bookmarking.

So if you do not want all your bookmarking public,ere are some tips:

1. When bookmarking/tagging in del.icio.us, you can always click the "do not share" button for any or all your bookmarks and it is private. You lose some of the benefits of social bookmarking, but then you do get better privacy and can still use the service for your own bookmark organizing.
2. If you still want to participate in social bookmarking but are a bit concerned, don't chose a username that can be identified with you.
3. Choose to make any bookmarks that can be identified with you or your life (eg. your hometown website, your portfolio, the company you work for, etc) as "do not share".
4. Under account settings "edit profile", indicate that you don't want your name or a url used.
5. If you don't want to others to see those in your network - you can choose to have that not display. This is also done in account settings under "network privacy".
   

I don't want to scare any one off as I have never had any problems with del.icio.us and I am as open as possible on it. But I wanted people to know about the privacy options as they are important considerations.

To close, I'll include a quotation from a classmate on my del.icio.us knowledge that was cyber-candy to me:

Your knowledge of del.icio.us is astounding! I am learning so much, thanks! You could be a tagging consultant, make oodles, retire at 40 and live in the Caymans!

I intend to start a custom tag, "Tagging_to_Caymans" and put all the ways I can make money from this trivia.

On Tags and Signs: A Semiotic Analysis of Folksonomies

In the last few years, the practice of tagging resources on the World Wide Web has become a more popular activity, due in part to the success of websites that feature tagging functionality prominently, such as del.icio.us, Flickr, Technorati, CiteULike, and LibraryThing. These websites allow the collection and sharing of bookmarks, photographs, blog postings, academic papers, and books respectively, and tagging is a key method to enable retrieval and sharing within these sites. Delicious offers the best description of tags and tagging, and this description can be extended beyond bookmarks to a general definition:

Tags are one-word [or multiple words written without spaces or with underscores] descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on del.icio.us to help you organize and remember them. Tags are a little bit like keywords, but they're chosen by you, and they do not form a hierarchy. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like…This is great for organizing and finding personal data, but it goes even further when someone else posts related content using the same tags. You begin building a collaborative repository of related information, driven by personal interests and creative organization. (del.icio.us)

Tagging information as a practice existed prior to these websites popularizing it, but these websites were among the first to extend the practice beyond the domain of content creators or information specialists to the general public (Weinberger, 2007, p. 92). When tagging is done by the public, it is often known as a folksonomy (globeandmail.com)

For an understanding of how folksonomies work, or often do not work, the academic tradition of semiotics offers help to “understand what goes into a message…[it] also help[s] to understand how the message comes to have meaning” (Littlejohn & Foss, 2008, p. 105) Through a semiotic analysis of the characteristics of folksonomies, I will explore three main difficulties inherent to them. Despite these difficulties, they are emerging as a popular new form of communication in line with the more fluid notions of meaning consistent with the post-structuralist notion of semiotics. The characteristics to be examined are that, first, folksonomies’ collective nature facilitates open meaning, second, that tagging for the self results in confusing connotations, and third, that there is a lack of message coding (in the semiotic sense). Prior to discussing these characteristics, however, I will provide background information about the problems inherent to the use of folksonomies, and insight on how semiotics provides a useful conceptual tool to examine them.

Problem with Folksonomies

The practice of tagging is useful as a personal means to organize data and as a mnemonic device for one’s own retrieval. Indeed, it was originally for this use that Joshua Schachter created del.icio.us (Weinberger, 2007, p. 162). When one moves beyond the personal uses for tagging, however, to the social aspects, the utility of tagging becomes more problematic. There are essentially two levels of complications: 1) people’s tags may be difficult for others to understand, 2) people may have tagged items inappropriately for others’ needs. A good example of this problem was a recent search of Flickr for photos of Hawaii. In addition to the expected images of beaches and volcanoes, one also gets, among the top results, a picture of a couple at an outdoor restaurant (presumably located in Hawaii) and a close-up of a lizard (also presumably located in Hawaii). Another example of tagging difficulties arises in a scan of the most popular tags at del.icio.us, revealing some more meaningful tags (youtube, tv, psychology), but others that are puzzling (toread, fic, ubuntu, fun). People are participating in folksonomies, but not always doing it in a manner that is useful to others.

Use of semiotics

Semiotics is the “study of signs” (Littlejohn & Foss, 2008, p. 35) and tags are definitely signs. Using a triadic structure of a sign with a signifier, that is the “material dimension of the sign,” a signified, “the cultural or conceptual dimension,” and the referent “the real thing in the world,” the structure of a folksonomy sign can be broken down (Black, 2007a, p. 5):

1. signifier = a word or single term that is a link appearing on a webpage
2. signified = what that word link represents to the user, i.e. an expectation of resources on that topic
3. referent = the actual resources that have been tagged with that word, at that point in time

Examining folksonomies through this semiotic structure initially reveals one of the fundamental difficulties with folksonomies, that is, the referent is almost always unknown to the user until he or she clicks through. Often with signs, there is a clear or discernible referent, yet folksonomies, by their very nature, are a complete mystery to the user, making a single, clear meaning unlikely.

Another problematic element is that current technology and practice do not disambiguate the multiple senses one signifier may have (for example, synonyms such as: asp, the programming language and asp, the snake of Cleopatra fame) or to join multiple signifiers sharing the same signified (for example, blog, blogs, weblog). Morville believes that folksonomies are thus fundamentally flawed due to their inability to “handle equivalence, hierarchy, and other semantic relationships caus[ing] them to fail miserably at any significant scale” (as cited inWeinberger, 2007, p. 166). However, Weinberger believes that computers, possibly via artificial intelligence, will eventually address some elements of ambiguity in folksonomies (Weinberger, 2007, p. 166).
For Saussure, a founder of semiotic theory, “the meanings of a sign were fixed socially by convention and, thus, were independent of any consequential variation in interpretation” (Danesi, 1999, p. 11). Yet, consequential variation in interpretation is often widespread with folksonomies, indicating that the meaning offered by tag signs is more complicated, compared to other uses of signs.

Quality Ingredients Make Bookmarks Del.icio.us

It has been one year today since I started using del.icio.us. Despite extolling its virtues ever since to everyone I know, I've stirred up little interest (foolish mortals not grasping the potential of social bookmarking & folksonomies!).

Until, coincidentally, yesterday when a friend, Glenna, (even the name is a coincidence) asked me about del.icio.us (little did she know what she was begetting).

Del.icio.us is my favourite web application and I keep finding more reasons to love it - and you will too if you read on and sample it.

Del.icio.us is a free web-based bookmarking service founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003, but was bought out by Yahoo.

Rotten old style bookmarks
While I have always loved bookmarking, it has a lot of limitations when done via one’s browser. I use the web a lot at home and at work and there was no practical way to share bookmarks, nor access them on the road. Another problem is that avid surfers and information hoarders, such as myself, quickly outgrew efforts at even the best attempts at classifications schemes via folders, subfolders and subsubfolders. Also, bookmarks could only appear in one folder (unless you bookmarked the same page twice) so you had to remember your filing convention.

It's del.icio.us!
The main difference with del.icio.us is that you tag a webpage with terms that you specify. Tags are keywords related to the webpage. Getting used to tags is not hard. You only need one tag per bookmark but can have as many as you want. Not sure how to tag a page - del.icio.us gives you suggestions on what others have tagged it. That's all you need to do.

Top things you can do with del.icio.us:

Cool stuff for the bookmarker
1. Import your existing browser bookmarks
2. Buttons can be added to your browser, so it's quick to use
3. Add comments or summaries to each bookmark
4. View bookmarks in your browser via downloadable del.ico.us toolbar
5. Back-up or export your bookmarks
6. Bundle tags to organize bookmarks into meaningful groups
7. Hide your dirty little secrets via “do not share” option
8. Search your and/or others' bookmarks
9. Create separate accounts for different things (eg. work vs personal)
10. Share an account with your work team or association for easy info sharing
11. Each tag you use has a unique url, so you can link directly to it (say I want to share my findings about Internet culture, here's the link)

Cool stuff for the social networker
12. Share directly with friends using del.icio.us via one click
13. Build a network of friends and bookmarkers you admire and monitor what they're up to
14. See who else bookmarked the same obscure site, look them up, and bond
15. Add del.icio.us' Facebook application to share with your Facebook friends

Cool stuff for the website manager
16. Add a del.icio.us button or link to your page/blog to encourage people to bookmark you
17. Learn who’s bookmarking your site and what pages specifically – also see the tags your users find applicable to you, which can be a real eye opener

Cools stuff for the Internet publisher or blogger
18. Syndicate your bookmarks - your bookmarks & your tags have individual feeds built in (using RSS) so people can subscribe to the feed in their readers
19. Automate the publishing of your tag(s) using the feeds (as I'm doing with the Net News on the right)
20. Publish your work account's bookmarks on your intranet
21. Copyright your bookmarks (you own them, not Yahoo) using Creative Commons

Cool stuff for searchers & researchers
22. Find people interested in the same topic as you and check out their bookmarks
23. Add value to the web, as tags help indicate what a webpage is really about, eventually technologies will be able to use these tags to help improve search engines (ie. semantic web)
24. Create custom tags to help research and micro-organizing (in gearing up for my graduate research, I started tags for Internet_theory, Internet_history, Internet_politics, Internet_journalism, etc.)
25. Subscribe to tags of your choosing and see updates in one spot
26. Check out the homepage for what's hot and recent in the community

Other cool stuff
27. Create a tag for yourself and keep track of all the online stuff related to you (or me)
28. Get gifts you want by bookmarking your favourite stuff with the tag “wishlist” and when someone wants to know what to get you send them this link (this was del.icio.us' own tip, but its the best!)

Not so tasty
One of the biggest problems with del.icio.us is that tags have to be one word. A further limitation is that all spelling variations of the tag are counted as unique tags (so you’ll see social_bookmarking, socialbookmarking, social_bookmarks and they are all treated as separate). While it’s great to be able to use the same tags as the larger community, your tags need to be readable to you, so find a convention you find useful and stick to it (for instance, I like to capitalize proper nouns and I like multiple words separated with underscores rather than compounded). It also doesn’t handle synonyms well (eg. I want to bookmark sites to order cookies to eat and sites discussing website cookies).

There are also a lot of competitors, but none as popular. I've tried StumbleUpon but haven't got into it. Yahoo MyWeb (why they launched a competitor to their own company is beyond me) has a cool feature that let’s you store a copy of the webpage despite what seems like copyright violation.

Here’s a helpful page to begin: http://del.icio.us/help/saving

Once you're on del.icio.us, be sure to add me to your network.

Web 2.0 Mash Ups

Recently, two of my greatest loves on the Internet have just married another one of my greatest Internet loves. Marriages made in cyber-heaven and I'm blissfully happy!

Facebook, which I am still addicted to, now integrates really nicely with you dear blog and with my beloved del.icio.us tagging.

While I am rather reluctant to hoist all my stuff on otherwise innocent friends, I do like to have some audience for what I believe to be some cool, meaningful work I've been doing online.

Rather than try and get the audience to come to me, it's better to go to where the market is: Facebook!

del.ico.us built a custom application to syndicate your bookmarks (only the ones you choose to share) onto your Facebook profile page and if you choose to also on Facebook's stalker page.

Facebook allows you to publish all your blog postings, granted in vanilla format, into Facebook via importing them as Notes. Facebook then automatically checks every two hours for new updates and publishes them.

While my blog readership is growing very slowly (and I have no idea who some of the subscribers and visitors are, which is a good sign) it's great to have another venue as well.

My del.ico.us work I've been dying to make better use of (eg. see "Net News" on the right). There is a promising Network ability on del.ico.us but I don't know anybody seriously using it (other than Eden). If you'd like to join My Network please do so.

I also got excited when another love of mine, this one an offline one, seemed to have a cool Facebook application. The new Vampires application seemed cool but just sucked, truthfully. (Note for those "Zombies" who bit me and want me to feast on some fresh, tasty brains - forget it. Zombies are beyond my mandate.)

Otherwise this Web 2.0 mash-ups have been a beautiful thing!

My Brain is a Big Mesh

Just got back from Mesh. However, I've been so preoccupied with the website relaunch (yes I'm sorry to still be harping about this - at least the end is in site - June 18 is the go live date) that I haven't been able to sleep. So it's been hard dragging my extremely tired ass, attached to my stressed-out mind to this conference.

But I'm glad I did. Maybe it was the free Red Bull they were giving out, but despite my relaunch-withdrawal-induced insomnia, I had a great time, learned a few things, and talked to a lot of interesting people.

Mesh also had the unexpected benefit of having me home before 9pm so that I had time to blog and tag.

Spending the last couple days hearing and discussing all the cool things people are doing on the web, made me realize what a relaunch bubble I have been in lately. Not only has my dear blog languished, but I haven't tagged anything to del.icio.us in almost a month. I may love my del.icio.us bookmarks even more than you dear blog, so when I tagged Interaction Camp today (which I'm hoping my kaput ass can make it to this Saturday morning) I felt like I was reconnecting with a long-forgotten friend (a feeling not dissimilar to a friend request from someone barely remembered from highschool).

Okay, so back to Mesh.

First, I loved the setting: MaRS. Great mix of a heritage and new building.

Second, the attendees at this seemed way more friendly than any other conference or seminar I have ever been to. And they were very interesting and knowledgeable - I finally feel like I have found others in the know (I've been questing for a group of Internet professionals in Toronto and have been disappointed as some are too badly organized, some are full of amateurs and others are really only for marketing-types). So it was exciting to meet people with a similar background and passion for the Internet. Wish it wasn't just for two days though.

The keynotes, panels and workshops were good - particularly since the organizers had gathered impressive speakers both well-known and lesser-known experts.

I think the most useful things for me was the 15 Minutes of Fame that allowed innovative companies to introduce their wares. I'll be trying out at least a couple things from this and will be blogging about this later.

Mesh was a happy interlude - reaffirming my love of the Internet and love of talking about the Internet. Now back to the grind...

1.2 readers for every blog

Last week, I read in an article, Web 2.0 - Using Blogs by Brad Einarsen that every North American blog has an average of 1.2 readers (based on study by Forrester). I’m hoping that figure does not include the blog author!
Thanks to my wife and Eden, my loyal blog readers, my blog is at least ahead of the pack.
The research shows that most blog readers are also people that write blogs. Blogs don’t get a lot of reach beyond this group.
Plus the number of blogs out there is overwhelming and disheartening. I keep finding at least one or two a day – many of which are definitely worth reading regularly and some are good, but considering my information overload, I don’t have time for.
This all lead me to feel quite discouraged about blogging, but then a faithful Webslinger reader, my wife, mentioned that there is a lot of value in blogging just to keep a record of what I’m doing and learning online. Isn’t this how blogs started – as a web diary, a.k.a web log? I think I will keep blogging as it is a useful record of my online experience and findings and if anything else comes of it (including a reader or two – or rather .2) then all the better.
However, I don’t plan to blog as frequently. Some blog entries are really just drawing attention to useful articles I read. And there isn’t a lot of value in just posting an intro to these without offering my take on it or some sort of context or analysis.
I read a lot of articles about the Internet every day and have been faithfully bookmarking ones with lasting value to my del.icio.us. I was thinking it would be great if I could share my picks and upon looking into it I found that del.icio.us makes syndicating and sharing bookmarks and tags really easy.
As such I have launched my breaking news feature, which you’ll see on the right.
Web news - picks by Glen
There are a lot of articles published about the Internet, many of which are nothing more than screen-filler. I collect the articles that discuss best-practices, trends, latest research, the evolving role of the Internet within our society and culture and of course cool and shiny new developments.
You can view the web news here or subscribe to the feed yourself.
So Webslinger may be evolving despite the discouraging statistics. And if you are a loyal reader (I can hear crickets chirping) let me know...