Social Bookmarking For Blogs: del.icio.us

I was playing around with my del.icio.us account the whole day today, mainly trying to figure out how to slap a del.icio.us script at the footer of each post, versus just having one at the side of my blog.

Del.icio.us is a free social software web service for sharing web bookmarks. See, there used to be a time when you'd bookmark your favorite websites from whatever PC you'd be using at the moment. Del.icio.us takes all that bookmarking several steps further because, not only can you store all your personal bookmarks on an easy-to-use, easy-to-access online account, you can also share your bookmarks with other people, as well as check out what other people are bookmarking.

So in essence, del.icio.us allows you to create your very own list of links, categorize it, and share it with others. You can access this list anytime you're online, so you can practically bring your list of links and bookmarks to any PC or laptop you're working on.

As a blogger, you want this service. For several reasons:

1. On the front page, you can see what are the hottest topics/pages/blogs at any given time. You'll want a quick way of finding the newest, or the most popular resources online, especially on subjects related to your blog.

2. It's a great way to market you and/or your brand, or in this case, your blog. You would want to use del.icio.us to promote your blog and your individual blog entries with other people.

3. It's really meant for networking. You'd want to hook up with people who also look for the same things you do, and share bookmarks with them, as they share theirs with you.

4. It's a great way to archive your blog. Del.icio.us allows you to keep track of what you've already written or what you still want to write about.

Check this out: Roland Piquepaille has a great read on how he uses del.icio.us. Sign up for del.icio.us by visiting their website. For more information on del.icio.us, read more about it on Wikipedia here.

I hope this has been useful. Cheers, everyone!