Practicum 7 - Alexa

I think that one of the major values of using social bookmarking sites is that you can be exposed to lots of different information that you might not otherwise encounter. I've compared it to Twitter in a few of my blog posts, but I think that in some ways it has a value beyond Twitter. For me, the people I follow on Twitter are ones I choose. Whether its my friends, bloggers, celebrities, or news outlets, the users I follow on Twitter are ones that I think I will like. If I don't end up liking them, I can unfollow them very easily. This gives me a lot of control over what kinds of stories I'm exposed to. On these social bookmarking sites, I can see what news stories are most recent or most popular in the whole network. This means that sometimes I'm exposed to stories that I wouldn't find otherwise. I think this is an important quality of these sites because if I were just looking over the web I might miss out on something that is important, even if its news source wouldn't merit a follow on Twitter. Additionally, sometimes I find new sources on the social bookmarking sites that I wouldn't have known about otherwise that I end up liking a lot and following. I think it's interesting how interconnected all of these social media sites end up being. It's really a testament of how much basic things like news and communicating with friends have changed to incorporate various different interfaces. I could easily see how someone might rely on Digg or Delicious as a major source of finding news information, as well as a way to socialize and share information with friends.