Feedback, Motivation and Collectivity in a Social Bookmarking System

Abstract: Social bookmarking systems let users store, classify and share their bookmarks online. They are global grassroots classification systems. Classification is a basic mental process that determines how we see (or ignore) the world. The first social bookmarking system was del.icio.us which came online in late 2003. I performed a pilot study of a survey of del.icio.us users focusing on feedback, motivation, and collectivity. The paper linked below is an abbreviated version of a term paper submitted for a graduate methods course in communication this past spring term. I plan to continue researching this topic for my master’s thesis over the coming year.

You can read the presentation on the Kairosnews site, or as a PDF here, or watch it as a QuickTime movie here.

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You’re currently reading “Feedback, Motivation and Collectivity in a Social Bookmarking System,” an entry in Ericka Menchen-Trevino, the blog of Ericka Menchen Trevino

Published:: 06.13.05

Tags: classification, Research, Tagging, Thesis

pc4media 06.22.05 / 6am

Lists as Social Networking Tools

Implicit Social Networking: Using the things that connect us to connect us. Like has happened for the last few million years. We relate through other things: music, events, mailing lists, their work, bookmarks, other people.

Raymond M. Kristiansen 06.23.05 / 3pm

Hello, thanks for sharing your work with us. Will blog about it at a later point, and you will probably see it on your Technorati radar in case trackback to this page does not work r.

dltq.blog » Blog Archive » technology and the social » Blog Archive » Feedback, Motivation and Collectivity in a Social Bookmarking System 06.23.05 / 3pm

[...] Archive » Feedback, Motivation and Collectivity in a Social Bookmarking System technology and the social » Blog [...]

Fenton 06.29.05 / 10am

Thanks for the paper. We’re running into a problem/challenge at the http://www.musiccherry.com blog because categorizing music in and of itself is really hard. Is Ryan Adams alt-country, country, classic rock, punk, sad-core, etc.? all of the above? none? There’s no right answer.

On top of that we have to categorize how we talk about music: by album, song, artist, style, etc. We can’t allow users to do bottom up categorization so we’re constantly guessing at how people want to read the site.

Things like technorati are slowly helping us do it because it puts readers in more control in describing us and the technology does some of the work in associating what we write with other things, but it all still starts with our guesses. We seem to be doing ok at it because Technorati is our second largest source of traffic behind Google.

Ericka Menchen-Trevino

Feedback, Motivation and Collectivity in a Social Bookmarking System

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