Week 6 #13 #14 Del.icio.us & Technorati

#13 & #14 I was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed by Del.icio.us & Technorati. There was a lot of stuff out there & a lot of ways to get to more stuff. In that sense I found it a bit overwhelming. As to being underwhelmed though, I found a lot of the content to be trivial, virtually meaningless or dreadfully written (especially in Technorati). I do not really need to read someone's blog about some Latino porn star which is one of the items that came up when I was searching. Top Searches consists of people looking for information on Paris Hilton. This is going to increase my knowledge of the world in such important ways! Technorati can be fun to use, and I like the idea of tagging, but there is just so much junk to wade through. I don't know how much I would use this site.
I did do a focused search for guppies (aquarium fish) in Del.icio.us and got some useful sites and information, however, I could have also got most of this just by doing a Google search. I do like the idea of tagging and find it a fun way of getting information. I like that it is so open and that you can include a wide selection of words to indicate your subject. It's sort of like browsing, where you may find a bit more than what you were actually looking for. I can see the uses to a library although I don't know how you keep out the bad stuff.
Del.icio.us bookmarks are supposed to be used to help build "an expansive knowledge network."
This is good if the knowledge is useful and accurate but what's the point of a knowledge network of junk. (Wikipedia is having a problem with this). I could see more uses for Del.icio.us in a work setting than I could for Technorati which felt more fun than value.
The PLCMCL2 site was interesting, and here you start to see information that is more intelligently presented. I can see the use in having bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere and there is potential for librarians to use this as a tool for research or to keep up to date on information about the profession.
I read Alan's blog (My 23 Journeys) and had to agree with most of what he found in reviewing these sites. They do have some uses but, as librarians, I think we will have to be careful not to get bogged down in the trivial.