This is no accident; Delicious’ ability to recognize patterns with bookmarks in aggregate while keeping focus closely on the content of the page in question is, in large measure, what’s made Delicious successful and innovative. (They’ve added the network features for the exceptions where a user does care to follow another user’s links. The design they arrived at for this feature works well precisely because it treats these cases as the exceptions they are). Think of Delicious as Google, but powered by human reviewers instead of — and treated as dispassionately as — automated bots and you’re seeing the service more accurately for what it is.

Accordingly, if you are seeking acclaim for finding great stuff (a reasonable pursuit), Delicious probably isn’t the tool for the task: you’ve done your part by bookmarking the page for the larger good.

You might more effectively achieve your goal by featuring the links on your blog with accompanying commentary (something you likely already do). If your commentary is popular/timely/interesting/etc. it might be featured on the “fresh” or “popular” pages on Delicious as it will be seen as valued content. This will bring it to the attention of more people.

As far as I can tell, that’s how it works.

But the web provides the unique opportunity of a super-focused vertical for targeting your stuff. We can go for just the eyeballs that we think our ad provides value for. No more shouting (or billboards). Your ads only get shared if they’re worth it (or your content is worth it) to the sharer’s circle of influence. Permission marketing, put a more famous way.

So doesn’t this just help your content get a better demographic? Won’t these be people who are worth it to you as a publisher to focus on?

Depending on what field you’re in, you can connect to your peers/users with delicious. I can visually see what my friends and colleagues are looking at. There is nothing like that anywhere on the web that keeps me informed of what I want as specifically as delicious does.

Sure it’s a bookmarking site, but it’s not a cult where people basically run “payoffs” to other users in whatever form to “help” promote content.

Let delicious be… it does just fine. No cults, no spamming, no burying of good content. Just a place where you can see what everyone is organically bookmarking.

Personally, I think it’s the one and only source of true content anymore. The rest are gamed and abused. So I think it’s the perfect application just as it is. As far as the twitter integration… well I integrated mine long ago and most of my tweets are from delicious as opposed to Digg, Mixx or Reddit.

My two cents and I very well could be wrong… but it’s the way I use it and it feels oh so good

Great post and start of discussion Brian!

You bad ass

But I’m certain you’ll find a direct correlation between the amount of publishers that promote a sharing platform and the amount of people using that sharing platform. It’s important that bookmarking services are recognized and promoted by publishers. Otherwise the people who simply want to use these services will never know about them.

If every publisher replaced their “save to delicious” button with a “save to faves.com” button, you’d see a MAJOR shift of users in a few months time.

Young designers made Delicious like Digg or something. In the beginning of Delicious, I remember, people were using Delicious just for -like Scott says- easy access without your own computer and remember your fav. pages or articles later.

And, Delicious is not for the “publishers”. Delicious is for the users. And, Users=Publishers in Delicious.

Actually, people shouldn’t send their own article to Delicious. And, shouldn’t promote that. This is unnatural. If you are using Delicious for remembering your own article, why you’re using. Use Digg or something like that.