Technorati and Tags

I have to admit, Technorati is a lot less intimidating than del.icio.us. I actually kind of liked Technorati (which isn't to say I disliked del.icio.us, but you read my last post and know how it gave me heart palpitations at the sheer size). My favorite thing about Technorati by far is their search capability. I love that you can search for keywords that appear anywhere within a post, tags that are attached to a particular blog entry, or blogs that are simply categorized about one specific subject. It's one of the most handy search features I've come across, and I played around with it for a good long time.

Since Blogger automatically has tags that can be picked up by Technorati, it eliminates the need to really put in the specialized html tags that will allow Technorati to "catch" the post. (I'm still not sure what the proper lingo is here...so it will "ping" Technorati when a new post goes up? No clue.) I'm not sure I like the idea of my blog being registered and made public for the whole world. I've been blogging for a long time, but I've always locked my posts for friends only, so the idea of having a public journal that is easily found via blog search engines like Technorati and Google Blog Search is kind of scary. I suppose if I were publishing a blog that was meant for mass consumption, that would be one thing - I would be glad to have it registered with sites so I could get a lot of traffic. But when it's just me playing around and musing about technology, I don't feel like it's necessary for everybody and their brother to be able to find my blog.

Nevertheless, that's just the way of the internet, I know, and perhaps being online for more than a decade has made me properly suspicious and overly cautious about making myself findable on the internet. I have a huge online presence on many sites, but I know how to protect myself against being searched and found, and I try very hard to keep myself shrouded because there are a lot of crazies out there. My goal is to only allow myself to be seen where and by whom I want to be seen. It takes a lot of diligence, but I think I manage to do it fairly well, and that's one of the primary reasons I don't like having a billion subscriptions to so many different sites. The more subscriptions you have, the harder it is to keep track of them and make sure you don't accidentally have your name or your location somewhere you don't want it to appear. There are plenty of decent people out there surfing the net (not just the crazies), but I'd still rather be safe than sorry.

I'm getting off track though. Technorati is a great site, and I think it's really useful for searching the blogosphere. Easy to use, fun to play with. This was a pretty enjoyable activity.

Tagging and Del.Icio.Us

Wow, is del.icio.us a huge site. I've explored it once before, and I was a bit overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information that is collected there. I think it is an amazing site and is wildly useful, but I don't have any desire to create an account.

See, my major problem is that, while I love organization, the concept of tagging every neat website I come across seems like a labor of love I don't have enough love to complete. I get this constriction of the chest in panic as I contemplate what a huge task it would be to document and somehow catalogue every website I use and/or find particularly useful. The sheer size of the internet and the daunting task that tagging things into categories entails makes me feel kind of ill. I know once I started tagging, I would be obsessed with tagging everything perfectly. Even tagging on LibraryThing and on this blog makes me a little twitchy. What if I don't have the right tags? What if I tag it in a way I won't remember? Do I have time to create a system of tagging that will make sense to me and prevent me from "losing" websites AND be cohesive somewhat with other people's tagging systems? It's almost enough to give me a panic attack.

That being said, I would definitely use the site. For instance, when I was looking for layouts for the library's WordPress blog, I went to del.icio.us and found a bunch of tags for WordPress layouts, which directed me to some sites with fantastic alternative layouts other than the defaults the site provides. For me, I prefer to think of del.icio.us as a sort of informal catalogue or search engine for the web. It allows you to search very easily and browse through websites others have found helpful on any number of topics, and I do really like that about this site.

To avoid heart palpitations and panic attacks, though, I think I'll avoid creating my own account. Ultimately, I think it will be more useful to me as a reference tool than a personal bookmarking tool.