Pinterest and the Power of Social Bookmarking: Tag Yourself (Web Design is Dead)

By jmacofearth On 01/27/2012 · 71 Comments

(Today 2-7-12 Mashable publishes this: How Pinterest Is Changing Website Design Forever) Yep!

Back in the day, deli.cio.us was a huge deal. Tag, bookmark, group, and share every bookmark you create on the web. Network with others, subscribe to peoples bookmarks, look though someone's taxonomy. It was a huge geek fest and it was entirely text driven, and thus is was fast. Several services followed to try and improve on del.icio.us and then AOL bought them. Thus was born www.delicious.com. And the magic began to die on the vine.

Today Pinterest is the fastest groaning social network of the moment. Yes, I said "groaning." Everyone I know, that is in the business, asks, "Seriously? Do I have to learn another social media platform?" My answer, quite simply is YES. (The 11th and 12th Disciplines of Social Media)

So let's look at social book marking for a minute and see what connections delicious has with pinterest. And then we will open it up for discussion.

Delicious (previously del.iciou.us) is still far and away the best TAGGING and RECOVERY system on the web. Yes, I still believe this. I use delicious every day. It is my index of the web. As the book Everything is Miscellanious (affiliate link) points out, it is not how YOU want to index and recall the information that is important, it is how I want to do it. We no longer browse websites, travelling down some architected sitemap and taxonomy towards the goal. NOPE. Google is our index, and search is our rapid retrieval and navigation system. Except Google isn't all that good at remembering or organizing our stuff.

Screen Shot 2012 01 27 at 11.00.38 AM Pinterest and the Power of Social Bookmarking: Tag Yourself (Web Design is Dead)

click on image to see full-size version

*see this presentation on Slideshare.net: Web Navigation is Magical and Random (2 slide/powerpoint)

So delicious once used TAGS to catalog and navigate saved information. Here are my most common tags for the sites that I have put into my delicious cataloging system.

Now let's look at Pinterest, which is a very different take on a similar idea.

Screen Shot 2012 01 27 at 11.34.34 AM Pinterest and the Power of Social Bookmarking: Tag Yourself (Web Design is Dead)

click image to see full-size presentation (powerpoint)

*see this presentation on Slideshare.net: Web Navigation is Magical and Random (2 slide/powerpoint)

Pinterest is bringing an entirely new cataloging and navigation to the web. It's visual. It's random. It's social. And it will kill you if you don't watch what you are doing. And you had better pay attention. I can promise you, your customers are.

If you need a Pinterest invite visit my page and ask, I'll send you one.

NOTE: Any doubt that Pinterest is about to rock the web? I just got an email from Mashable telling me to follow their humor Pinterest page.

2nd NOTE: Several Visual Social Bookmarking sites followed delicious and have since gone away. So, perhaps Pinterest is merely a flash in the pan. There is something to be said for the pure text and tag cloud interface of delicious.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2012/01/pinterest/

Reference from Mashable: Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers [INFOGRAPHIC]

All Uber.la Pinterest posts:

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