Don't Back Down

It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of social networking. By that, I don't mean services such as LinkedIn, which I'm getting to enjoy, but the sites such as del.icio.us and flickr. Sure, they are neat, and I've played with them, but I don't really get them.

It isn't as if this is new. I've talked about it before (and before that and even before that).

You see, I get the idea of tags. I really do. I like them so much that I installed Scuttle on our server so that I could use them to help me make better use of the few bookmarks I do keep. This is because my tags are important to me, but your tags are not. They help me find things as I store them. The tags you provide are much less useful there. And don't worry - I understand that my tags aren't useful to you either. That's okay.

I have even used del.icio.us-helper services, such as populicio.us, which helped, but I still didn't really get into it.

Perhaps I'm showing my age, or maybe I didn't learn the sharing lesson in kindergarten, or just don't get it in the first place, no matter my age. Maybe it's because I'm not really a browser. I rarely am in need of something to do, so I don't typically go bounding about, looking for things to keep me busy. But this is all beginning to change, thanks to digg.

Digg takes the Slashdot model and makes it useful. I've read Slashdot on and off for years. It's off now. I just don't have the time. But digg? I'm finding things in their front page every day, on a regular basis. This is a cool site.