Do you RSS? Can you Digg it?
A recent survey of the online experience of Base One employees showed that while we're a pretty web-savvy bunch, there are some popular web tools we currently don't use very much - namely RSS and social bookmarking.
This stood out to me for two reasons. Firstly, according to our survey over 40% of us don't use these tools - a higher number than I expected. Secondly, I think RSS and social bookmarking are some of the most useful online tools available to us right now.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) brings the latest content (feeds) from your favourite sites straight to you. The RSS I use is especially convenient as my feeds are collated alongside my online email so I can check them at the same time. I'll admit I'm not sure if I'd find it as useful if I had to use a separate programme to collect feeds, but even so it would still be quicker than checking out 10 separate sites several times a week.
There are several well-known social bookmarking sites on the web (I personally use del.icio.us, but there are plenty out there) and it's invaluable to have your favourite sites bookmarked centrally. So whether you're at work, at home, or travelling, you can access your most frequently used web pages regardless of which computer or browser you're using.
The really useful content in a site is often buried deep, which usually means the URL you need may be too long to remember days later. This is just one of the things that makes social bookmarking great for online research - you don't need to remember URLs, you just check your bookmarks anywhere, anytime. And since URLs are tagged by other users as well, you can search those tags as an alternative route to finding related, useful content.
So I'm left wondering why RSS and social bookmarking came out so low on our internal survey. Are they not as well-known as I think, or are they considered merely the domain of the geek? Or maybe it's simpler than that, and we're all so dependent on search engines that we see no reason to remember a site when it can be found again with a quick visit to Google? I'm still not sure...
6 Comments
Noël Ponthieux
Google dependency is a good point, hadn't really thought of that as a reason not to bookmark centrally.
I'm one of the least techie people at B1, but I love del.icio.us. I think I came across it when I clicked the little checkerboard icon on a Copyblogger post, out of curiosity. I don't think anyone explained it to me at first, and I hadn't heard of it otherwise.
But once I found it I felt like you do: this is so incredibly useful and easy, how come everyone's not doing it? And why didn't anyone tell me about it (pout, pout)?
I don't use it as a research tool, though - for me, it's a sort of bottomless, exceptionally well-organised kitchen drawer for all my links, (esp. with the Firefox add-on making it all instantly accessible and searchable).
Digg still leaves me cold - too dominated by tech-related stuff.
Jennifer Handbury
OK. So, I'm one of the lazy ones. I definitely rely on Google. And, low and behold, I have never visited del.icio.us. (which I just had to read how to write from Noel's comment).
Are there any good business-to-business bookmarking sites? Maybe that could be one of the "rivers" that David Thomas and Briony are discussing on the Word of Mouth post.
Susanne, tell me more about why people should have a look into bookmarking and do you know any business style sites?
Susanne Wraight
I haven't found a specific social bookmarking site for business that I'd recommend, but that doesn't mean it isn't out there!
The most important thing is to find a site that works for you; that fits with your logic, is visually appealing to you or integrates with your browser of choice.
I use del.icio.us because it integrates with both Internet Explorer and Firefox (particularly well with Firefox 3 I think), any links I add also show up on my Facebook profile and, put most simply, it was the first social bookmarking site I came across. I'll stick with del.icio.us for those reasons. Until something better comes along of course...
John Williams
Bookmarks? What are these things you speak of? Mind you, this comes from a man who spent £1600 on a computer to surf the net and play solitaire - didn't need to know or want to know what all the other gubbins did.
I still go to google and type in the name of the website I want to go to rather than putting it in the address field - I'm a ppc and seo marketer's dream!
David Thomas
John - you're not alone!
(Dan Cummings please stand up)
The 'Don't make me think' Steve Krug book talks about it in;
'Fact of life #3'
http://www.sensible.com/chapter.html
John Bottom
Have known about RSS for ages, but simply didn't bother with it because I had no idea just how useful it could be. But, prompted by a colleague a couple of weeks ago, I got myself an RSS viewer and it now saves me a serious amount of time, allowing me to catch up on all the football news every lunch hour. (And still have time for a little Solitaire of course, John.)
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