How will the end of Del.icio.us effect social media?

Social Bookmarking is an online service that is generally unknown by internet users. Sites like Del.icio.us are in danger of being taken away from internet users. Yahoo has announced that they are going to discontinue Del.icio.us’ services sometime in the near future. Is the fate of this site the future for the rest of the social bookmarking? If so, then the entire internet community will be at a loss. This is because without social bookmarking, we will lose the ability to find new sites that are recommended by our peers. We will miss out on new information and opinion from other bloggers and sites. As well as the convenience of being able to keep all of our bookmarks in a location that the accessible from any computer. We need to show these sites that we value their existence before we lose them forever.

A reason why Yahoo might delete Del.icio.us is because it seems to be an ineffective technology. However, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. This is because workers for Del.icio.us looked back at all their bookmarked pages and found the first 20 users of each page and cross referenced them in order to find any repetition. In class I tried this experiment with a couple of sites. And while it took a while to complete, I found the same users bookmarking many sites. Which proves that people, in fact, are using this and therefore it is a relevant technology. If you don’t already have an account at Del.icio.us I suggest that you start one today. It’s an easier way to find sites that pertain to you, without wasting as much time as users tend to do on Stumble Upon. I recently set up my account and I couldn’t be more impressed by how easy it is to use. Be sure to set up an account today and see what it’s all about.

Mubarak steps down

 18 days after January 25, 2011, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down after 30 years of power. This revolution was aided though the use of social media. Which raises the question: where might social media aid another revolution?

Of course, I can’t give you an accurate prediction of the location of the next social media revolution. However, how we achieve change has been altered forever. Previous revolutions were successful without the use of the internet, yet through sites like Twitter and Facebook, we can expect to see revolutions happen much faster. This is due to the ability to move information faster than ever before. In this case, Tahrir Square could have been filled with protesters without the use of social media. But do to social media; the square was filled with people faster than what one would think possible.

Last week, when I heard that Mubarak was going to step down from power in 6 months I thought that he made that claim in an attempt to stop the protests. But as it turned out, he resigned just a few days later. Should we thank social media for his expedited resignation?