Tag everything! - A qualitative study of the use of a social bookmarking system

Abstract

Web 2.0 is a term frequently used to describe a new approach to web technology that emphasises or draws advantage of the web as a social space, and user-participation is among the central characteristics. One form of user-participation is social tagging, a practice that allows ordinary users to apply metadata in the form of labels to resources they come by on the web. A popular application of social tagging can be found in social bookmarking systems. The online bookmark manager Delicious is among the many start-ups that embraced tagging between 2003 and 2005, and is probably the one that has received the most attention. Bookmarking is a popular way to help manage information on the web, and the collection of publicly available bookmarks and tags on Delicious has attracted a lot of interest. Some observers have expressed hope that the phenomenon of social bookmarking could help solve the problem of the web as an unorganised and chaotic information space. This study examines the social bookmarking phenomenon from the perspective of the users. The empirical findings are based on semi-structured interviews with ten users of Delicious, performed during the summer of 2007. The informants share their thoughts on using the service and the role it plays in their everyday information interaction. My findings suggest that bookmarking to Delicious is one of the responses to the challenge of managing the large quantity of informational resources encountered daily on the web. In addition to being a personal information management tool, Delicious has a social dimension that to some extent conflicts with the use of Delicious as a personal information management tool. The consciousness of Delicious as a social and public space varies, resulting in a vulnerability that is unequally distributed in relation to the level of awareness.