The Social Web
“[All] roads now point to a Web where very little is done in isolation and all things are collaborative and social in nature,” says Will Richardson in his chapter “The Social Web.” And I say I must agree. When I look Wikipedia and other wiki sites the collaborative nature of these sites is the first thing that comes to mind… I see millions of little bees working all over the world, creating, compiling, posting and editing information. While it is true that all this information isn’t one hundred percent correct, as I have discussed on my blog in the past, more than less it is correct – cited, compiled and edited by people who care about the information and its accuracy. The social aspect of the Web helps lend to the collaborative aspect. 
In my last post I mentioned some of the problems and possibilities that social networking sites can create. Richardson concerns himself with all the possibilities, and the way he speaks, they are almost endless; his favorite site appears to be Twitter. He likes the brevity of the posts and the question/answer discussion that can take place on the site. He notes as I noted the opportunity for sharing information that these sites can provide, but Richardson takes things one step further and asks answers the question it didn’t even occur to me to ask: what do we do with all the information once we get it, and how do we keep up with all the links and sites?
Richardson offers up two sites that not only solve the problem of what to do with all these links, but provides the user with even more opportunity to share information: these kinds of sites are social bookmarking sites. They allow you to find other sites, collecting, organizing and sharing the information you find. Based on what you need to do sites like Diigo or Delicious might be the way to go. As I am currently working on a Wiki entry on Walt Whitman’s place in pop culture with four other people, sites like Diigo and Delicious would make sharing our research easier, as we could tag our colleagues into a site so they could retrieve the information we found.
Social bookmarking pages really seem to help connect the dots in the social web. Sites dedicated almost solely to social networking, like FaceBook or Twitter, allow the use to connect with other people who share a common interest; sites like WikiSpaces allow uses with a comment interest to collaborate and work in an on line forum; social bookmarking link these two endeavors, allowing users to organize the information they have gathered and share it with others in a meaningful and organized way.
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