By David Golan (March 23, 2009) (delicious,MIPs)

It was very difficult to think of a massively interpersonal network that I use other than facebook. As Milena said, I have lots of random accounts, like LinkedIn, that I never check. Then I tried to think of a game – but I never had the time or energy to get sucked into MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Second Life.

So, here is a list of some potentially relevant networks/games I came up with: delicious.com, digg.com, area/code’s “Plundr” (http://plundr.playareacode.com/), Social Bomb’s “Paparazzi” (http://www.socialbomb.com/), and ARGs (alternate reality games) in general.

For the sake of discussion, I’m going to explore delicious.com because I actually use its service:
– Persuasive Experience: ever since I started using delicious, I always weigh the web pages/articles I come across in terms of its importance/relevance to others. My behavior has changed since I now often tag webpages to delicious to share publicly and with my friends.
– Automated Structure: The delicious firefox plugin makes the act of sharing the webpage so easy (it requires two mouse clicks) and delicious.com allows users to browse and search all shared pages.
– Social Distribution: I have distributed a link to my shared bookmarks to my friends. They simply have to visit that link to see them. Similarly, I can check others’ shared pages easily online. However, the social experience is very passive – one checks delicious if curious. There is little emphasis placed on social connections or user interactions past adding users to a network list.
– Rapid Cycle: Again, one can easily and instantly check others’ bookmarks.
– Huge Social Graph: In my experience, the focus is more on an overall, public bookmark experience rather than social networks. However, the site you tag has the potential to be read by all delicious users and the general public.
– Measured Impact: All can observe what type of pages and how often I bookmark on delicious. This can provide valuable insight into the user and overall trends on the internet.