E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise – IBM’s Internal Tagging Tool – Dogear as a Weblog Engine

Yesterday, Bill Ives created another interesting weblog post where he provided some further detailed information on one of beta tools that IBM is making use of for social bookmarking: Dogear. He briefly mentioned as well how he recently attended an IBM media event on the same subject, and which I have weblogged about myself not too long ago, and finally referenced the main article that describes how Dogear actually works.

In this last weblog post on the topic he provides a very good overview of some of the most relevant features from the application itself and since I have been using it myself internally for quite some time I thought I would also share one other feature that may have gone unnoticed by many but which it still provides a very powerful capability. And that is the fact that Dogear can also be used as a weblogging engine. Yes, indeed, it can be used as your own personal and independent weblog. How ? You may be asking yourself, right? Very easily. Let me explain.

For anybody out there who may have been weblogging for some time now you would agree that one of the commonest practices from us all is to basically share our two cents worth of comments from different web links that we find out there: news items, useful tools links, reviews, books and a long etc. are some of the topical areas we use for our weblog(s). Yes, perhaps what you could classify that as Linkblogs. Well, Dogear in itself has got that weblogging lookalike user interface that allows you not only to annotate those web links like you could do with other social bookmarking tools but people who bump into your links could also add comments and engage in some sort of conversation similar to what you get with standard weblogs.

And before you know it you have got yourself an audience that follows up not only the original link you are sharing but also your thoughts on it, and where applicable (To them, that is) they will engage with you in a conversation where everybody has got the opportunity to get to interact with you and others. And by clicking on the tags of those links and also with the graphical reference on the number of people who may have bookmarked that web link as well as the RSS Newsfeeds before you know it you have got your own weblogging platform alive and kicking and all of that thanks to sharing your bookmarks with others. Just brilliant !

That is another way how people are making use of Dogear inside IBM and how a traditionally identified as a social bookmarking tool could also be adapted to becoming a powerful weblogging platform for people -and for communities of practice- to leverage not only their web links but also what they think about each of them and share it with others. Collaborative web at its best.

Tags: IBM, Dogear, Social Bookmarking, Metablogging