What is Delicious? Social Bookmarking.

Ok, but what does that REALLY mean? I’ve done my research, and I finally understand. Delicious allows you to bookmark your favorite websites to your online Delicious account. It is just like the ‘Bookmarks’ tab on your own private computer, but it’s online. For years now, I’ve been saving my favorite sites in my ‘Bookmarks’ tab, then when I got my new mac last year, I had the tedious task of transferring all those bookmarks to the new laptop. All of that could have been saved if I was using Delicious.

Think of it this way; Delicious keeps your bookmarks online, so you can access them from any computer. No more transferring data every time you get a new system. Plus, if you’re at a friend’s house, on vacation, or at work you can pull up your saved bookmarks.  Once you have a Delicious account, you also get to share your bookmarks with others. So for me, this is a great feature as I’m often sending info to my mom. This will allow her to become a part of my ‘network’ on Delicious, and she can view my links. Also, if she finds a site she thinks I’ll like, then she can send it to me quickly through the Delicious site once she’s saved it in her bookmarks.

And it’s not just limited to your friends and family. Anyone can view your links on Delicious. It is, after all, a social networking site. You can search for people with simialer interests, and network with them to browse their bookmarks. You can search tags (search terms) to find links on virtually anything (Siamese cats, Boston Red Sox, cooking, whatever your interests are).

Basically, Delicious is an online community of people sharing information that they like and feel is interesting or useful. It’s a really, really good idea.  Originally, I thought that the key was to bookmark all of our blog articles into our profile for our readers to find in one place. However, now I’m realizing that’s not the best approach. John and I are going to use it as it’s meant, and start populating our Delicious profile with all of our favorite websites. So from here on out, everything we find that we like (cofebuz.com, hubspot.com, stevepavlina.com, etc) will go into our profile. This will allow our readers to network with us (and vice versa) and browse our links to find articles or sites that you may be interested in as well (assuming you like us and our style). It’s a wonderful resource.

Now for the technical stuff. Let’s set up a Delicious profile and add some links;

1. Go to http://delicious.com/ and click on ‘Join Now’.

2. You’ll be asked to set up your account details.

3. Next install the Delicious Button. This a button that goes on your browser to allow you to quickly bookmark a site to your Delicious account. If you don’t want to install the button, you may still manually import the sites URL into your account here.

4. Now I have a Delicious Bookmark Button on my browser (see top of image), and my next step is to import the bookmarks I currently have saved on my computer (but you don’t have to).

5. Now just go to work saving your favorite sites.

And you’re done!

That’s the basic function of Delicious. Now you can spend some time exploring features, networking with your friends and finding new friends to learn about their interests.

Delicious is a great tool for businesses too, as you can interact with your clients/readers and share ideas.

-Amy Stevens Adams of Cape Cod Branding