Social Bookmarking & Collective Intelligence

By Manjunath Patil

Introduction For the past 15 to 20 years we have seen an explosion in amount of information. Thanks to the development of networked computing, digital storage mechanisms and of course the Internet information is becoming increasingly accessible. With all this vast amount of information, retrieving web pages of interest has become increasingly difficult. In the complex and fast changing world of web and the enormity of information it offers, businesses are trying to find a method in madness so they can better cater to customers and their ever changing preferences. They can take respite in the fact that there are tools which can harness the power of 'Collective Intelligence'.

Collective Intelligence: Definition

“The theory of collective intelligence holds that groups can be smarter than individual expert knowledge” - George Pór, a pioneer in collective intelligence

You might have observed this phenomenon, that in game shows like 'Kaun Banega Crorepathi'(Indian adoption of 'Who wants to be a millionaire') more often than not audience poll always returns right answers. The above example illustrates 'Collective intelligence' at work, also called by various terms as 'Group Mind', 'group intelligence', 'crowd sourcing' or 'Shared intelligence'. Collective intelligence as defined in Wikipedia reads “Collective intelligence is a form of intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals”

Social Bookmarking Better Knowledge management involves categorizing and locating the information when needed. One of the simplest techniques is to tag or label items with descriptive words as opposed to storing in hierarchical folders and this is exactly where Bookmarking tool comes handy. Bookmarks are a way for web surfers to save, organize and manage their favorite web sites or links online by using web sites that offers this type of free web-

based services. The users of these tools usually do this through an add-on on web browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox. Social Bookmarks are the links shared by people of similar interest or group. Some of the prominent bookmarking services are Diigo, digg, del.icio.us, twitter, yahoo (Yahoo! Buzz) & StumbleUpon.com.

What Bookmarks can offer? For businesses

� Links from shared bookmark lists or from blog entries lead to more detailed business information about that individual, such as contact and position information, work location, and areas of expertise.

� They can get tacit knowledge on how people perceive their products and services, and new ideas on how to market them.

� Peek into Brand awareness. For researcher and website owners

� Different people call the same item by many different names. Knowing

how people refer to an article or a story (e.g. by examining tags per link) gives us an idea of what others think about it. It lets you aggregate the contents into different subject areas.

� Bookmarks build links to your content/site and helps you get better ranking on search engines like Google.

For an enterprise like ours

� Today’s knowledge workers are expected to play more than one functional role and as such calls for a whole new approach on how teams work and share the information. Social Bookmarking facilitate an eco-system for a more informal, direct and democratic modes of reporting, information-sharing and problem-solving. Innovation through collaboration is the mantra for today’s success.

Visit Diigo, one of my favorite Bookmarking site to get yourself one.