“D to the E, to the L-I-C-I-O-U-S”

I’m now officially a “deliciouser,” a neologism I use to describe del.icio.us users. For years, I’ve saved articles in Word documents or e-mails, or kept them stored away in blue binders. My dad still cuts out articles about journalism, or news about my hometown, and mails them to me. Maybe I should introduce him to del.icio.us. A part of me still likes having a hard copy of stories that you can hold and snail-mail to others and always will, but del.icio.us is changing my view on how to best share and collect news.
At its most basic level, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, meaning you can aggregate all the articles/Web sites you find interesting onto one site. You can then share these articles with others and see what your family, friends, colleagues, etc. are “bookmarking” on their del.icio.us page. Other social bookmarking sites to check out are: Digg, Reddit, and Newsvine. Here is a detailed list of bookmarking sites compiled by Sharomatic. I never knew there were so many of these sites!

It wasn’t until Poynter’s summer fellowship for recent college graduates that I had even heard of “del.icio.us.” Maybe it’s some fan-club site for Fergy’s “Fergalicious,” I thought. “D to the E, to the L-I-C-I-O-U-S ..” Or maybe it’s a site that ranks the best “Top Chef” meals based on a “delicious scale.” Hey, who knows …

But then I started to realize that del.icio.us can be a valuable resource for journalists, or for anyone looking to share articles/interesting ideas with others. My colleague at Poynter wrote a two-part series on journalists and social bookmarking, which helps explain what del.icio.us is all about. Here is a fun snippet from her article: “You may be wondering why the URL for this site is del.icio.us and not delicious.com. It is an example of something called a domain hack, a crafty tool used by programmers to create a succinct word play on the intended URL. (Both delicious.com and delicio.us redirect you to the del.icio.us page). In this sort of address, “del.” takes the place of the usual “www.” and “.us” takes the place of “.com.” Between those combinations of letters, “icio” was an obvious choice.”

Check out my del.icio.us page. What articles/Web sites have grabbed your attention lately? Let me know, and I’ll add them to my list. Feel free to share your social bookmarking pages with other Word on the Street readers …