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The Utility of Social Bookmarking Environments

I'm just back from a quick dog walk, where I had a moment or two's reflection on what social bookmarking environments are good for.

On and off over the last few months, I've exchanged occasional mailing list posts and blog comments with Todd@Big IDEA on the matter of having different personal profiles within a social bookmarking environment. Todd's been looking at the for ScuttlEdu, most recently here: One account, multiple profiles.

Related to this is the idea of private bookmarks, whether for individuals or groups, which allow you to partition your bookmarks into public and private spaces.

Now, one of the oft quoted arguments against private groups especially within social bookmarking systems is that by splitting the population numbers you get less added value from the sociality of the environment.

And this is partly true. (I say partly because I think there is value in subject specific groupings where you have a chance of building up expert communities of practice.)

For most benefit in a social software system, you need a critical mass of active participants, and it can be dangerous to split your community.

However - and this is where my reflection about my personal assumptions regarding social bookmarking systems comes in - I think that as well as providing a social, community utility, with added value from sharing bookmarks and resoucres, many social bookmarking systems have a utility in their own right as a personal personal bookmarking environment.

Thios is particularly true of systems like CiteULike and Connotea where you get added value in the automation of academic reference collection.

And because many of us are lazy, it's convenient to keep all our bookmarks in one place (as well as taking up the free automation offers!).

So I might, for example, predominantly use a social bookmarking system in a purely selfish way, to the extent that I am largely bookmarking for myself.

But because it costs me nothing to share, I'm happy to.

Now, one of the ways I'm coming at the use of social bookmarking in education is that bookmarking in and of itslef can be a useful thing to get into the habit of, whether or not its social.

If there is a criticial mass of active community members, then you may start to get social benefits.

But that isn't to say you won't also get a personal benefit from keeping track of things you personally found interesting/useful even in the absence of beneficisal social effects.

So what am I saying - that one of my core assumptions is that bookmarking is a good thing to do. That if you do it in a social way, there may be a social benefit. But if there isn't - so what? You still have a useful personal resource...

Posted by ajh59 at January 9, 2006 10:14 PM