Pieces of me on community... : socialbookmarks

Microsoft Answers beta

b2ix — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:44:00 GMT

I want to congratulate all of those who worked on getting a beta Microsoft Answers up and running. It's great to see the nice integration of social applications like Forums and Social Bookmarks in a very person centric view. What exactly is Microsoft Answers?

A rich, interactive community experience moderated by dedicated support engineers.
One place for people to easily find Microsoft Vista content from Microsoft and others in the community
A series of experiences meant to welcome, help, and engage people

Here are some other folks talking about this.

Social Bookmarks v1 released

b2ix — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:11:00 GMT

A few months ago we previewed a version of Social Bookmarks that enabled technical professionals to:

store urls of interest to you
share them with others
explore what others share

Now we're ready to open it up even more. With the new release of Social Bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet, and Expression new scenarios are enabled:

Follow a person's bookmarks -- follow a bookmark feed of a specific person or a bookmark feed of a person by tag. Put another way, this is tag drafting
Bookmark on sites you own -- use our Social Bookmarks widget (English language for now, other languages in the weeks ahead) to make it easier for others to save your page as a bookmark
Support for 11 new languages -- all to be rolled out in the next several weeks -- Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish
Import existing links -- from your browser favorites or from Delicious
Browse other users -- see who else is bookmarking and follow their feed of bookmarks
Report a bookmark -- if you see a bookmark that you believe to be questionable, report the item to Microsoft for review

We would not be here were it not for your feedback, and for the work of an incredible engineering team. Thank you! Congratulations to all involved! Now get out there and bookmark :-)

More than bookmarks are coming to MSDN and TechNet...

b2ix — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:26:00 GMT

John recently wrote about the broader vision we've been working towards here for technical professionals. Rather than rehashing the whole thing, I encourage you to see what John has to say, and to stay tuned for these updates. With my passion around the intersection of community and technology, I'm quite excited about this coming to fruition on sites like TechNet and MSDN.

Time travel with Social Bookmarks?

b2ix — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:49:00 GMT

Some people have visual memories. Others say that smell is the strongest stimulation for memory. For me, I can remember the context in which a particular event occurred. More specifically, I can often remember what I was doing, where I was, and all of that when I came across a website that was of interest. In the past, this would lead to an inordinate amount of time trying to re-create my steps rather than doing my job.

Fortunately, with Social Bookmarks, I can now find the key words or phrases associated with a given url saved. All I have to do is click on a tag, or series of tags and my list of items gets narrowed down to the key pieces of information I need -- ultimately saving time, and letting me tackle the work I need to do at a given moment.

How does this relate to time travel? Simple. I recall that I ran across a website that had interesting information about a particular topic -- say "search." I am then able to see other search related items and can see where in a timeline I saved them. Being able to recall when, where, and that whole context in which I encountered the resource...I'm essentially walking back through time :-)

Loosely related, going back through one's bookmarks also helps me prevent the "Shiny Object Syndrome" that many of us face. It's also a refreshing way to counter what may be a re-wiring of our brains thanks to the afore mentioned Shiny Object Syndrome

Thanks to Bob for the inspiration of this post.

Updated Bookmarks Visualization url...

b2ix — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:04:00 GMT

Heh, seems I posted an earlier link to the Ticker the other day. Here is the updated link.

Visualizing Social Bookmarks on MSDN and TechNet

b2ix — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:08:00 GMT

What do you think of the current look of Social Bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet, Expression and Microsoft? Did you want to see an alternate perspective of Social Bookmarks?

In addition to the recent Preview of Social Bookmarks, we have a "Ticker" of activity Social Bookmarks activity on MSDN and TechNet (note you need the Silverlight 2 Beta) to see it in all its glory.

*links updated to point to the new home of the Ticker

Organize your life (or at least your favorite urls) with Social Bookmarks

b2ix — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:58:00 GMT

While browser favorites, or bookmarks, can help people find the web sites they need, many websites are not easily categorized into the folder model common with browser bookmarks. If this situation sounds familiar to you, then Social Bookmarks can help.

Social Bookmarks present a new way for you to store and organize urls of pages you find interesting. Rather than selecting one folder in which a url shall appear in, you can now associate multiple words (or tags) with that url. Each tag essentially serves as a folder for that url, and there is no limit to the number of folders in which the website appears.

You can also add a brief description about that url for future reference. Just think how much easier it will be to find the resources you find interesting in that extended brain of ours we call the Internet.

An added bonus with the description -- if you don't want to type your own description, you can highlight the text on the page you wish to save, and it will be automatically added to the description of that bookmark.

For more information on how to save a bookmark, and organize your list of bookmarks check out the following video.

Video: Social Bookmarks - Part II

Social Bookmarks Preview for MSDN, TechNet and Expression!

b2ix — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:00:00 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that we are now in the official Preview of Social Bookmarks on MSDN, TechNet and Expression. For the last few months, I've been working with a great team of folks on point for creating the Social Bookmarks experience.

http://social.microsoft.com/bookmarks
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/bookmarks
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/bookmarks
http://social.expression.microsoft.com/bookmarks

What exactly are Social Bookmarks? Simply put, Social Bookmarks enable you to:

Store urls of interest to you
Share them with others
Explore what others share

I'll dive into these in more detail, but in the mean time, if you haven't already done so, I encourage you to check it out. Our "Getting Started" page has a lot more information along with some video walk-throughs.

Caveat -- this is still in preview mode, so there's still more work to be done. Should you have any feedback, please let us know!

You may also be interested in these related posts on Social Bookmarks from others on the team

Social Bookmarks Preview coming…

b2ix — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:40:00 GMT

For astute followers of happenings on MSDN, TechNet and Expression, you may have seen hints at a social bookmarking experience. I don't have an announcement *just* yet, but another team member, John Martin just posted some screens in a preview of a preview.

John Martin
Jeff Day
Taylor Parsons