Many-to-Many: The Power of Conversation

Many-to-Many: The Power of Conversation: "“I don’t read anymore; I just talk to people who have.” — Dr. Tom Malloy, University of Utah"

Now, see before I finished reading, my immediate reaction to the quote was I don't talk anymore I just read. But of course, then Paul goes onto talk about social software being a conversation and memes being like sex. (he must not have had sex in a long time either...just kidding, I really do understand the analogy.)

Of course, I tend to be a bookmark collector, truly a bizarre exercise since I can often find what I want faster on Google rather than using search on my Spurls or my Del.icio.us bookmarks. I say that they are useless but as I say it, I realize it isn't true. I use my social bookmarks as a way of sharing stuff I found cool with family (mostly) and friends. I suppose a stranger may run across them in some shape or form. I also use them as a sort of a catalog of what I am doing, what I am interested in, how I have been spending my time. Sort of a portfolio of my self-education efforts, I always stumble when asked for formal qualifications or interests. Now I can peek at my tag cloud and say, hey, you know what? I know a LOT about css. They also serve as a way to jot the information into my brain. Just as taking notes or doing worksheets is made to inscribe school learning into children's brains...filling out my little Spurl / del.ico.us (I confess, I am a Spurl box user, but have it sent to del.icio.us too) box and tagging a web page helps me remember the information I learn. Description: A summary of the information. Snip (a Spurl only feature) the key piece of information on the page or a quote that I liked. TW Notes millenium style.

As I told one of my bosses once upon a time at a post-hire interview (She didn't hire me, she just got saddled with the responsibility of "supervising me") as one of my talents " I am good with search." Unfortunately, they became accustomed to having a worker good with search and have since run through several people in my former position because the new hires were not. (though I tried to explain how to search...somehow regard Google as a card catalog in the library is not useful to people who apparently have never been to a library, seen a real live card catalog, much less understand how to use one) So, no, my bookmarks really are horrid for search and click. If the speed gets better, then yes, I will no doubt primarily use them for that purpose . Now however I can say "I know I saw this last week and here is a key phrase I remember because I typed it, so I can search using that." If that fails..."hang on, its in my spurls." I am the person who can get the info faster by finding it on the net though, not through conversation. Unless of course you are considering conversation the massive amount of conversation reading I do....hmmm

I have wandered way off topic. This is no doubt SupaMB's fault and not Paul Hartzog's fault. (couldn't be that I just ramble) But, Paul has a great post there and you ought to read it (of course, Many2Many is a feed you should get just to be well-rounded in social software stuff in any case)

social_software, del.icio.us, Spurl, search, social bookmarking