What is del.icio.us?
del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's. You can use del.icio.us to:
- Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
- Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
- Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite -- they've already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.
You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved -- which is made easy with tags.
All you need is a browser and an internet connection. Sound good? Here's how to get started. If you'd like to find out more, keep reading.
What can I use del.icio.us for?
del.icio.us is an open-ended system, so you decide how you want to use it. Here are examples of things you can do with saving bookmarks on del.icio.us:
- Research - Writing an article? Researching an industry? Slaving away on your dissertation? Use del.icio.us to keep track of all the source materials and commentary that you find online.
- Wishlist - Go to any commerce site, find what you like, save it to del.icio.us and tag it as wishlist. Then you can tell people to check out your wishlist bookmarks by giving them a link to http://del.icio.us/username/wishlist .
- Podcast - Want to hear some great podcasts? Visit the mp3+podcast tag combination and start listening. Are you a podcaster? Start posting your mp3 files to del.icio.us and we will create an RSS feed for you.
- Vacation - Planning a trip? Save links to hotels, activities, and transportation and use tags like "travel", "vacation", and "to-visit". Collaborate with friends and family by using the "for:username" tag.
- Linklog - Save bookmarks to interesting websites and add a bit of commentary to create a lightweight linklog. Then, use linkrolls or the daily blog posting feature to include your del.icio.us bookmarks on your blog or website.
- Cookbook - Whenever you find a great recipe on a website, save it to del.icio.us. Tag it with the recipe's ingredients or style of cooking, and then when you're wondering what to make for dinner, you can use your saved bookmarks to help you remember the perfect recipe.
- Collaboration - Friends, coworkers, and other groups can use a shared account, special tag, or their del.icio.us networks to collect and organize bookmarks that are relevant -- and useful -- to the entire group.
What do those buzzwords mean, anyway?
What is social bookmarking?
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the web, instead of inside your browser. This has several advantages.
First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you're at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend's computer.
Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (Note that you can also mark bookmarks on del.icio.us as private -- only viewable by you -- if you like.)
Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on del.icio.us chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember -- which may help you find things that are useful for you, too.
What are tags?
Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on del.icio.us. They're a little bit like keywords but non-hierarchical. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and easily rename or delete them later. Tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into preconceived categories or folders.
Find out more about tags, including some examples and ideas about how you can use them.
OK, what do I do next?
Here's how to get started with del.icio.us.
Learn more about the del.icio.us team.
