Rubenerd

In one of the recent audio magazines over on Whole Wheat Radio I heard Jimbob discussing how he didn't know why people use del.icio.us, Digg or other popularity link sharing sites because when he wants to let people see what he's reading all he has to do is add the site to his Google Shared weblog thingy.

I totally agree with what he says about popularity based link and news sites. I really dislike Digg, reddit, Chuck Norris News and the like for reasons I could spend a whole week explaining. It could be because I'm a proud Slashdot guy and have used them as one of my main news sources for a long time ;).

ASIDE: Perhaps I distrust popularity-based sites because I never was popular myself. I may have just discovered something here!

I also just noticed that this weblog entry has the internal id of 1111. I could have created another useless Rubenerd Blog milestone post, but I chose not to. Aren’t you relieved?

So many links, so little time…

For this reason, I don't use del.icio.us as a silly "site ranking" or "social standing" system, but merely as a simple online bookmark repository, which for my needs has advantages over using the little Bookmarks menu in my browser:

• All my bookmarks are in the same place and are easier to manage
• Every computer I use has the same bookmarks, so no worries over syncronising multiple lists
• Works as an online backup system for links that survives for years
• The ability to export my links as an OPML file and import them into another site or even back into my browser in the future if I decide to switch
• And on the side, I can show people sites that I find interesting and useful

That said, there are advantages to using a Bloglines Blog or Google Reader's Shared Items features to show people what you're reading when said material is in the form of a weblog, podcast or other RSS or Atom syndicated material, but for one-off web pages that you just want to keep for later del.icio.us fits the bill quite nicely.

http://del.icio.us/rubenerd if you're interested :-).