Using del.icio.us

The heart of the matter, Part II.

Retrieving Your Bookmarks

  1. Click the other button, the one that says "My del.icio.us." It will take you to del.icio.us/username, where "username" is the actual username you selected when you signed up. (Make note of that URL. It will allow you to access your bookmarks from any computer.)

That's it. One step. Pretty easy.

You should now be looking at a listing of your recent bookmarks. Note that for each item there is link to edit or delete the bookmark. On the line below each bookmark you'll find the tags you assigned. If other people have also saved this bookmark you'll see a count. And finally there's an indication of when you saved the bookmark: "2 mins ago" or "on oct 07, 2005," for example.

Once you've got a bunch of bookmarks, you can use the "earlier" and "later" links to page through them. However, that's awkward and not usually the best way to find an old bookmarks. Instead...

Use Your Tags

The tags listed below each bookmark are links. Click one and you'll see only the bookmarks you've tagged with that term. If you have only one bookmark with that tag, you'll see only that single bookmark. But note at the top of the page it says something like (for example) "Your items tagged sciencefiction → view all, popular" (where "sciencefiction" is whatever tag you clicked). Which leads us to the next concept...

Looking at Other People's Bookmarks

Click the "all" link and you'll see bookmarks from all del.icio.us users marked with this tag. (Of course, if you have a really unique tag, you might be the first and only person to have used it.) This is a way to discover new content in an area of interest. Note the "save this" link that appears next to each bookmark. If you see something interesting and want to add it to your saved bookmarks, this does the trick.

Of course you're not limited to tags you've already typed. There are a number of ways to look at other people's bookmarks:

  1. Home: Go to the home page at del.icio.us and you'll see the "hotlist" of recently added, popular bookmarks. Notice also the "tags to watch" listing on the right.
  2. Tag Cloud: Check out the tags at del.icio.us/tag/
  3. Other people's pages: If you know another person's del.icio.us username, you can go directly to their page. For example, user "editor_b" (that's me) is at del.icio.us/editor_b. You'll also see a link that says "add editor_b to your network." This is a way to connect with friends, family, colleagues. You can add or remove people from your network with a single click.
  4. Search: Use the search form in the upper right corner to search for any tag or term for which you'd like to discover bookmarks. You can search your own bookmarks, other del.icio.us users, or the web.