Why does this generate a community? First, people are contributing to a community database without even realizing it. So, when you have millions of users with ten bookmarks each, people start to look at others' bookmarks and take them as their own. So as people contribute to the database with their personal favorites, others seek out more bookmarks so that they can fulfill their personal needs. It is through this mechanism that a community is created. This community becomes more community-minded as people begin to realize that they are sharing their bookmarks with others. Since del.icio.us is not discussion based like Digg or Reddit, it presents a new breed of online community that can be classified as a community built upon the foundation of selfishness.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Mmm..Mmm...Mmm...Del.icio.us!
For those of you who do not know, Del.icio.us is a social networking website in which users post their favorite bookmarks on their profiles and other users check out other people's bookmarks. Del.icio.us is used by and for the user, for his or her own personal reference. It is unlike Digg and Reddit because no one is trying to be the most popular user. People simply post their bookmarks on their profile and get cool bookmarks from others and add on to their profile. Now, as simple as it is, it has raised some concern for me as it exemplifies something I find very interesting about my generation--selfishness. An important distinction to make is that selfishness is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact it often create online communities that are extremely community-minded. Del.icio.us is a perfect example of this idea. Although people make personal choices as to what their favorite bookmarks are, the site is completely open for others and so everyone can benefit from one another's choices. People using del.icio.us are not maliciously inflicting their selfishness upon others, they seek out others' bookmarks in order to fulfill their needs.
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You emphasize the individual use of delicious, saying it “is used by and for the user, for his or her own personal reference.” But the about page on delicious says:
ReplyDeleteWhat is Delicious?
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.
The bulk of their “things you can do” is about sharing and discovering what other people are doing. So their emphasis is on the social not the personal. How did you come to your conclusion that the personal is primary? It seems like a quick impression rather than a conclusion based on data.
I also am not sure whether you mean “selfishness” in its normal pejorative sense, since you are thinking more of “enlightened self interest” in which your doing what is to your individual good also serves a larger community. But then the “my generation” remark seems ungrounded. Is your generation really different from others?
I think there are some hints of good ideas here, and would love to see the argument laid out more coherently.