Tagging and social bookmarking for nonprofits

Social bookmarking for nonprofits

Sun, 07 May 2006 14:45:18 -0700

"Social bookmarking" refers to a growing number of web services that let people save their bookmarks of frequently visited web sites -- equivalent to Internet Explorer's "favorites". By saving your bookmarks online you can access them from any computer that's connected to the Internet. More importantly, you can share your great online finds with others. And instead of folders or categories, most social bookmarking services use tags -- subject keywords that YOU can choose and combine, so that you're always able to find the resources you've saved.

How can tagging and bookmarking help your nonprofit?

Tue, 02 May 2006 16:38:03 -0700

Three ways social bookmarking and tagging can help nonprofits

Sun, 07 May 2006 14:50:47 -0700

Here are three major ways social bookmarking and aggregation can directly help nonprofits:

Automatically populate websites with up-to-date content: It's very expensive to create original content on a regular basis. If you set up a series of RSS feeds on a particular topic that can pump useful content onto your organization's web site; you're adding value to that content by selecting a particular combination of topics and sources. For example, an organization that advocates for women with HIV might create an RSS-driven news section on its web site that pulls relevant web resources from del.icio.us, photos from Flickr, and blog posts from Technorati (a bit tricky to set up as a RSS feed, but doable; the trick is to set up the search as a "watchlist", and then subscribe to the RSS feed for the watchlist.)

Furl

Sun, 07 May 2006 14:41:25 -0700

Furl is a very useful and well-organized social bookmarking service.

del.icio.us

Sun, 07 May 2006 14:21:01 -0700

Del.icio.us makes it easy to share and discover links because it:

Lets you figure out which tag options are most popular by comparing the number of pages of links contained under each tag.
Notes related tags for any given tag page.
Offers a simple and transparent system of URLs for shared tags (http://del.icio.us/tag/yourtaghere), so you can navigate to any tag page by entering the appropriate URL in your browser.
Easy implementation of multiple tag searches using the syntax http://del.icio.us/tag/tag1+tag2.
Lets you browse the complete bookmark collection of any other del.icio.us user, so that you can discover interesting resources by nosing around in the collections of people who are using the same tags you are.
Provides an RSS feed for every tag and personal page, so people can easily create their own linkrolls (i.e. a constantly updated list of links you've stored in del.icio.us that you place in the sidebar of your blog) and can easily subscribe to tags for topics they want to follow (again, the predictable URLs help, e.g. http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/yourtaghere).
Stores and retrieves links quickly (most of the time), so that using del.icio.us is as fast and reliable as using your built-in browser bookmarks.
Has an open and (as I understand) usable API that encourages other developers to enhance both the personal and social applications of del.icio.us with add-ons like visualizers and bookmark synching.

That said, del.icio.us could use some improvements to make its social bookmarking even better:

What is social bookmarking?

Wed, 03 May 2006 12:01:49 -0700

If you use a web browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari, you may be used to storing web sites you want to visit again as "bookmarks" or "favorites". You may also have discovered the limitations of your browser's system for storing bookmarks: You may have a lot of different folders that take a long time to search. Or a hard time figuring out whether that web site about fundraising in a crisis belongs in the folder named "fundraising" or the folder named "crisis management". Or maybe it's just really irritating that your home computer doesn't let you access the bookmarks you stored on your computer at work.

Nonprofit blog exchange

Wed, 03 May 2006 11:47:58 -0700

Nonprofit Bloggers connect with each other through blog exchanges. Bloggers have to signup for each exchange, and then the blogger is given a nonprofit blog to write about in their blog.

Why should I use tags?

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:32:23 -0800

How can tags help nonprofits collaborate?

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:37:51 -0800

The story of the nptech tag is a great example of how nonprofits can use tags as a collaboration tool. By assigning the tag "nptech" to any resources related to nonprofit technology, volunteers and staff from multiple nonprofits have collectively assembled a terrific collection of nonprofit technology resources.

What are some other examples of nonprofits using tags as a collaboration tool -- either within a single organization or across multiple organizations?

How to choose tags for your del.icio.us bookmarks

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:21:52 -0800

So you're ready to start tagging. But how do you choose which tags to assign to any given link, photo or blog post? Here are some suggestions for tagging on del.icio.us; some of these guidelines apply to other tagging services as well. But tagging syntax does vary from service to service -- some tools let you use multi-word tags by separating with commas, whereas others will treat the comma as part of your tag!When you're choosing tags on del.icio.ous:

Check how other people are tagging the kinds of sites or posts you want to remember. Delicious Linkbacks makes this very easy.