If you liked del.icio.us's for:, you'll like your network

Many more people than I anticipated enjoyed the post on using for: in del.icio.us. As always, thanks for the encouragement, dear readers ;>

Before someone beats me to the next logical punch, I wanted to show all you for: fans how you can use the “your network” feature to make for:‘ing even more fun.

Your Network

The “your network” section in del.icio.us is simply a way for you to tell del.icio.us who all your del.icio.us “buddies” are and then perform actions and searches over the resulting social network.

You add people to your network by going to their del.icio.us page, and click the “add to your network” link. You can hide your network (why the hell would you do that?) or allow anyone to see it (that’s better!).

Here’s what mine looks like:

Why Use your network?

You get several benefits out of gardening your network in del.icio.us:

• del.icio.us creates an RSS feed (here’s mine) of all the bookmarks people in your network make. Like I mentioned previously, I rely on those bookmark for my primary pool of “cool links.” I prefer to subscribe to individual RSS feeds rather than the your network aggregation, but that’s just personal taste. Another side note: subscribing to people’s bookmarks is for more than just the content, it’s also good for learning about new tags and ways of using tags. For example, the tag hatchetjob…YUH!
• Once you make you page public, people can surf around your social network, hopefully finding someone that’s interesting to them. You know, the classic, “if I like this dude, I’ll probably like dudes they like…dude.”
• It’s a good way to bookmark people you’re interested in.
• You can use the “your fans” feature to see who’s put you in their network. Come on, you know you’re curious. I bet you hit reload every hour don’t you?
• del.icio.us makes it easier to send for:‘s to people in your network.

Let’s look at that last one in particular.

your network and for:

As en example of using your network to make for:‘ing easier, let’s take a look at a bookmarked I did yesterday and for:‘ed to several people:

Above is the bookmarklet UI I see when I bookmark the BarCampEarth page.

Under the “your network” header are all the people in my network with the for: prefix in front of them. Thus, once I’ve setup my network in del.icio.us, when I’m bookmarking a page all I have to do to for: it to people is click their pre-made link.

The blue highlighting means that I’ve clicked each the person. You can, of course, still type in the for: with auto-complete. The your network part just makes it easier if you prefer mousing.

…because it makes things easier.

Because I don’t want to subscribe to the your network RSS feed, I didn’t keep up with the your network feature until I figured out the whole for:‘ing game and that del.icio.us plunks down those for: links for people in your network in the bookmarklet UI. Now I add people to my network all the the time because it make using del.icio.us easier, quicker, and more fun.

Technorati Tags: bookmarks, del.icio.us, howtos, web2.0