Off-Topic Bookmarks? (Feedback Please)
By leelefever on May 10, 2007 - 9:56pm.
Dear Common Craft reader, I want to know your thoughts. Just recently, I added del.icio.us bookmarks to this blog's RSS feed. If you're an RSS subscriber, you've seen the once-daily digest of my recent bookmarks (which also appear on our zeitgeist page).
Presumably, you subscribed (or visit occasionally) expecting some consistency in the form of community-related content. While the blog posts will continue to be (mostly) on-topic, I'm considering loosening the restrains on my bookmarking and perhaps veering wildly off-topic.
An example is this map of Europe from Moscow. I love stuff like this, but I have been stopping myself from bookmarking it because it's off-topic and a part of blog's RSS feed.
What do you think about veering off-topic? If I mixed in some bookmarks that were unrelated-but-interesting (to me at least), would you forgive me?
I think that the notion of
I think that the notion of "on-topic" or "off-topic" shouldn't be too carefully construed. One of the advantages of blogging, IMHO, is the way that it provides a window into the thinking of its author that more tightly constrained formats can't.
My vote is to see those links.
Possible solution?
First, I agree with Jim that we can have a broader range of "on topic" links. Granted, if you had 10-12 unrelated links every day and only 1 really related link, maybe I would be a little irritated. Frankly, I skim links posts pretty quickly most of the time anyway, so it's not a big deterrent.
Second, what about using Diigo instead of del.icio.us? They have the option of making bookmarks private; I think that means they wouldn't be included in your link posts (although I'm not positive). Even if you wanted to keep using del.icio.us' posts, you could bookmark them with Diigo, then share it all with your del.icio.us account. If you find yourself with a lot of unrelated links, you could save them in Diigo and choose for those particular links to not save them elsewhere--you can do that manually for each link you save regardless of your default settings.
Just a thought--you might want to play with it. I can't say that Diigo is reliable enough that I would use it as my only bookmarking service, but when it's working, it works great. :)
Veer Away!
BTW, blinklist also lets you choose whether to keep your bookmarks private or make them public.
www.blinklist.com
Delicious Bookmarks
(This isn't a reflection on yours, just a general observation of how they're often used.)
I, for one, don't like Delicious bookmarks in feeds. I'm subscribed to several sites that do this, and unless it's clear that they're meant for me, I just assume that they're bookmarks the person finds useful. Most aren't interesting to me.
On that note, can you constrain them to a specific tag? That would alleviate your issue, if possible, and perhaps mine.
Links, yes
I agree with Jim. Even off-topic links can provide insight and extra context. And as for private bookmarking with del.icio.us, you can do that on a per bookmark basis.
Bookmarks as Blog Posts
I'm realizing that I'm looking at the delicious links differently. Since I know they are going out in RSS, I see bookmarking as another form of blogging as opposed to being purely a bookmark for my own purposes. In this way, I hope that the bookmarks offer a means of seeing, as Jim and Carrick pointed out, another window.
For some, I think the public nature of their links is secondary to their personal reasons for bookmarking something. For me it's the opposite - I do it to share with my readers and I don't want to put you off by veering too far.
Thanks for the thoughts and pointers to other tools and features, I'm planning some experimentation. Any more thoughts?
YES!
I LOVE seeing what other people are bookmarking on del.icio.us so I'm all for you bookmarking anything that catches your eye. That's how "viral" happens!
That said, something that I used to do on a former blog of mine was set del.icio.us to only post bookmarks with the tag "blogthis". You could do something like that for stuff that's relevant to the site, and the rest of us del.icio.us users can just add you to our networks to see the off-topic things.
And as Carrick said, you can mark individual bookmarks "private" with del.icio.us. I do it all the time.
Sure, if it's funny or interesting
Yea, feel free. I'd love to "know" you and your personality a little more, so I wouldn't mind. Especially if it's something along the same lines that I would like too, which I have a pretty good idea might be the case. It's good to be diversified, so I won't hate the playa. I won't even hate the game.
Veering - yes, bookmarks - eh...
Veering makes you more "real". Done well, it's what makes you memorable.
Bookmarks... when I first encountered bookmarks in feeds, I was annoyed. It struck me as lazy. Then I started paying some attention, and found some great stuff. It's not pretty, and if that's *all* there is, it is indeed lazy. But as a small percentage of the posts, I think it's just dandy :)
Dont mix writing with links
I've had similar problem. Finaly I've decided not to mix links with articles/opinions on my blog and give the users a choice: my links OR my thoughts/analysis.
Why:
- There was almost no comments on "link post", the rest were valuable
- Now I can mix "personal" and "pro" links on del.icio.us...
- Try to read your blog by rss :-)
- If someone is interested in my links - there's a prominent place on my blog with latest ones...