This will be the first time that I have spent an entire blog about something other than Lopico. But this is the most blogworthy site I've come across (other than lopico). Del.icio.us, is going to change the internet. People talk about del.icio.us as a way to track trends, but it's potential is far beyond that. It's a way to start trends and it's a whole new way (or hopefully will be soon) to search the web.
Search engines such as Google use incoming links to rate a sites value as a resource on certain subjects - while this has turned out to work well enough, it is not always the best way to find quality sites. One problem in particular is SEO (search engine optimization). I'm all for good SEO writing and believe that writing a site well is very important, but with some skill an SEO'er can write a site into rankings that it doesn't deserve. Del.icio.us has the potential to change that. When I use delicious I see an opportunity for the web to be ranked by web users not algorithms. I look forward to the day when I can search del.icio.us and find top ranked sites for my query as dictated by the number of bookmarks for that search.
There will be several challenges however. First, del.icio.us needs to prevent spamming & bookmark farming. Traditional search engine algorithms have led to the creation of link farms, I can envision the creation of a bookmark farm in which a web developer signs up to have 6,000 people bookmark his/her site to shoot it to the top of the popularity rankings and generate instant buzz. Second major challenge will be to draw a large enough audience, this I am not as worried about for delicious, one you start using it you won't want to stop. But, the key will be to draw in web developers to put their sites on delicious, and to file them under the proper tags. It has a lot of potential, but it also seems easy to take advantage of from a web developers standpoint. In fact, I am myself contemplating adding every city from Lopico to del.icio.us. I think that it will be valuable for a lopico page to show up any time someone is looking for a business in a Lopico city (both to the person and to Lopico). But at the same time, I am worried that if I dump a bunch of pages into del.icio.us all at once they will be ignored and my posts will be ignored.
Ultimately it is a revolution in the making and will change the way that you use the web. Whether it is del.icio.us or a copy from Google or MSN it will change the web. There's more to say but the best way to learn about it is to use it (and don't forget to bookmark Lopico).
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