Cross-post: del.icio.us, the Social Web and FluidDB

I generally try to keep my various interests segregated into different blogs. But I think a cross-post is worthwhile in this case. Apologies to anyone not interested.

A few days ago, I wrote an (admittedly rather long) blog post at another one of my blogs, Abouttag. The article starts by discussing del.icio.us, the original, and in many ways the best, social bookmarking site on the web. It then goes on to discuss the relationship between del.icio.us and FluidDB, an online datastore that lets anyone attach any information, to anything in the world, using tags with (or without) values. For example, FluidDB allows me to rate a book, or to mark a website as being of interest, or to attach a picture of Miles Davis to Miles Davis (or at least, to the FluidDB object "about" Miles Davis). If that sounds interesting, you can read the post here. Needless to say, I was spurred to write the post by the news that Carol Bartz, Yahoo's new CEO, has sacked the del.icio.us team and plans to offload the website from Yahoo. (First Disclosure: I am a shareholder in, and advisor to, Fluidinfo, the company that produces FluidDB. Second disclosure: I am not a shareholder in, or advisor to, Yahoo; in fact, if Yahoo hadn't bought del.icio.us and flickr, I wouldn't even have a Yahoo ID.)

Why might anyone interested in direct marketing want to read about del.icio.us and related things?

Well, you might not. But I think it's clear that the set of related things variously labelled social media, social networking, Web 2.0, the semantic web and the "web of things" are all increasingly relevant in marking. And there is a strong case to be made that del.icio.us was the most important of the early sites in the whole space. The article talks about some of the less-commented-upon features of del.icio.us, and describes how you build on the simple concepts of tagging, sharing and bookmarking to get something even more powerful and wonderful.

As for the web of things, I think it's great, but I'm still waiting for the "web of atoms" that will allow me to buy an espresso on-line, and have it delivered out of a nozzle in the side of the computer; immediately after the espresso cup had emerged, that is. But that's another start-up . . .