I finally decided to start social bookmarking again. In case you are not familiar with the concept, social bookmarking sites provide you the ability to keep your bookmarks online, making them accessible from anywhere. You can choose to make yours public, see what other users bookmark, find similar sites, etc. The two most prominent sites are del.icio.us and ma.gnolia.
I had been faithfully using my favorite service, ma.gnolia, for several months when I stopped. It was not a conscious choice – I just stopped using it. Yesterday, I decided to start using it again. I realized there were numerous sites I had discovered recently that had been lost to me due to the fact I had never bookmarked them.
I realized something though – I have a subconscious bookmarking strategy that I never actually realized until now. You see, I keep an insanely organized Bookmarks collection on my local PC. Many of these have lived safely within it for close to a decade. These are sites that I will routinely or at least occasionally need for one reason or another. They are forums in which I participate, blogs I read, tech sites, news sites and a myriad of others. There are hundreds of them tucked neatly inside Firefox. I occasionally export a bookmark.htm and throw it up in a private subdirectory of this site for access away from my computer. In looking at that list, I discovered my strategy: I use my local bookmarks for “important” sites – sites that I want to be able to call up at a moment’s notice. They are, of course, organized into subdirectories for easy browsing. Conversely, on ma.gnolia, I will find my saved links to individual articles or blog postings. For example, you will not find FoxNews or DrudgeReport in my ma.gnolia.com bookmarks – they are saved locally. You will, however, find links to indivual articles that I have found on those sites. You won’t find digg or bit-tech on my ma.gnolia, but you might find resources from those sites. Does that make any sense?
How do you do it? Bookmark everything locally or online? A combination approach like me? I’m curious. 
I use a nearly identical approach, though I don’t have hundreds of bookmarks in Fx. I have a top 50 or so for sites that I visit often that do not have RSS feeds, or that have sporadic content that I only check on, say, once a month. In that top fifty I have forums, news sites, administration links, web host links, my start page, my feed reader, and many other links that I visit from time-to-time. Some I visit daily, others when I need to. I use the Fx bookmarks toolbar to have (mostly) one-click access. Sites that are a little further down the “need” rank get thrown in a folder, but still accessible on the toolbar. If I ever go more than a year without visiting a site at least a few times, I delete that bookmark from Fx.
On Ma.gnolia, I store all my research, interesting articles, online tools, “honeypots”, and other cool findings. What I usually do while I’m scouring around is open tabs in Fx to articles that I spot and want to read. Over time, I get around to reading them. Sometimes I bookmark them if they are good. Other times, I don’t get around to reading them, so I mark them in Ma.gnolia and revisit later.
I try to tag everything really well, though I’ve noticed lately that I have hundreds and hundreds of tags, so I think I might be a bit lost in retrieval mode. I normally only need my recent marks, but occasionally I’ll dig deep, though I typically know what I’m after, so I just search for it rather than filter with tags.
That’s my bookmarking technique. Interesting read, Zack.
David Russell
February 1st, 2007
Sounds the same to me. However, I just checked my bookmarks in Firefox and it is 117, so “hundreds” was a bit inaccurate.
I have the same problem with tagging, too. I have found that I tend to tag items in generic and specific categories, so a link to an article about a new iPod/iTunes trick might get tagged generally as Technology, but also as “iPod” and/or Apple. I have discovered several tagged as Tech instead of Technology and other variations on the exact same thing. I am going through and consolidating those so that I don’t have Tech and Technology, only Technology. Better to do it now when my online list is relatively small.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Zack
Zack
February 1st, 2007
information …
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Tovjivka
June 26th, 2007