Finding My Social Bookmarking Soulmate

            Social bookmarking websites such as del.icio.us and Stumbledupon are online services that allow users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks through web links. After signing up on del.icio.us, it took awhile getting use to the different features because I had never used a social bookmarking website. One feature I liked about del.icio.us was the tag bundle that allowed the user to sort their preferred tags by combining several related tags into a logical grouping. So, for instance, you might combine the tags “Persian Food”, “Music”, and “Farsi Language” into a bundle and call it “Persian Culture”. It doesn't change anything about the existing tags, but does allow you to create another level of hierarchy. When looking at your bookmarks, del.icio.us will show the bundle and all the tags grouped under it as a separate section. Another discovery engine I used to find my social bookmarking soul mate is Stumbledupon, which is a form of web search engine that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their interests. What’s cool about this website is that when you sign up it asks you to checkmark topics that are of interest to the user and it finds web feeds that are linked to those topics. The topics I selected were food, music, language, and history. It was difficult to narrow the search to “Persian or Iranian” because there was not that many search results coming up. Even if topics did appear, the users had no common interests that I was looking for. Although I didn’t find my social bookmarking soul mate, I would recommend del.icio.us rather than Stumbledupon because it was easier to use and I found similar tags related to my blog topic. The basic tags that I used to highlight the topics that are relevant to my blog are “Persian Culture”, “Farsi Language”, “Iranian Revolution”, “Persian Celebrations”, and “Persian Food”. I found a website that was of useful content called Iranchamber.com. Iran Chamber Society is a well-organized and comprehensive online source of information on Iranian/Persian history, art and culture without any membership requirement to access the data. The Iran Chamber society is a non-partisan and non-profit organization with the aim to promote Iranian culture and history. The website is divided into three sections. The Art & Culture of Iran section offers a variety of fields to look at. Some of the fields include Language and Literature, Culture & Ceremonies, and Architectural and National Monuments. Other sections include a History of Iran and Iran’s guide. The History of Iran section is unique because it is set up in a chronological time line and you can select the era and learn about the history during that specific time period. The Iran’s guide section provides updated news on media, sport, currency, weather, provinces, and politics. Overall, the website that I found through the social bookmarking tool has showed that social bookmarking tools are helpful in finding topics of interest by narrowing your search terms by using tags. Unfortunately, the website did not provide how many members or followers are signed up.