While I may be working on mapping out my own life and accumulating the resources and the knowledge necessary to accomplish my goals… I was still relatively behind the times when it comes to all the Web 2.0 fun… And from that, it’s given me a much better perspective on what’s commonly known in the media and other blogs as the “blogosphere” and really gained a better understanding of the community aspect of the Web 2.0 era.
I signed up with del.icio.us on Monday, to finally solve my annoyance with bookmarks. Whenever I stumbled upon a page or something I would like to actually keep around and possibly use one day, I used to just bookmark it. And soon enough, I’d have 400 or 500 bookmarks, all in one list. And then when I changed browsers/computers/locations, all my bookmarks would get erased. I actually managed to go through my bookmarks and find some pretty cool stuff from years ago, too! With delicious (f*** it, I’m not going to keep on putting in the decimal points) I can bookmark it and it’ll suggest tags as well, based on what other people have tagged it. That way everything is nice and organized. The site looks like it’s been beaten with an ugly stick, but it works well.
The more important thing I hooked myself up with is an RSS aggregator. In case you’re not all up on the lingo… RSS is a standardized format which almost every single blog (and major news-generating web site) offers as an option. You can use this “RSS feed” to read the exact same content in many other programs and websites. Aggregators, like Google Reader and Bloglines, allow you to view many different feeds at once, and instantly see what is new. I started off using Bloglines, but switched over to Google Reader, finding it a much better interface.
When you are able to easily switch around between similar feeds and see what has just been posted, you see patterns start to emerge. What you see on one blog soon finds it’s way to another blog within hours, or sometimes even minutes. It’s both interesting, and annoying (seeing the same story multiple times). But, from that, you can see what is more popular among other bloggers and what opinions are generated from them, hence producing a mob effect. This ongoing effect, similar to a rumor spreading around a crowded dorm room, is what is known as the blogosphere. I heard this term thrown around so many different times, but did not really grasp it until now. This completely eliminates the single-source method of print newspapers. The editor in chief, who controls everything you see in a newspaper down to the punctuation, has been replaced by a free-form cloud of independent-minded writers…. wow.
If you would like, you can download my current list of blogs and import it into your own reader.
