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tagometer: badges badges badges badges BOOKMARKS BOOKMARKS

Being a blogger, one of my long-standing wishlist items for del.icio.us has been to find some way to get more of what’s going on here to show up out there. Instead of just simple links, I’ve wanted to get a bit of peek through the keyhole to see just what “save to del.icio.us” means and what others are doing with it on my pages. So, I’m happy to cross this item off my list and introduce a new version of the usual social bookmarking button that we’re dubbing the ‘Tagometer.’

what’s a tagometer?

These are some snapshots of what the Tagometer looks like. Like simpler static widgets, it includes a button inviting readers to bookmark your page on del.icio.us. The Tagometer opens things up from there – using a JSON data feed from del.icio.us, the Tagometer includes an up-to-date count of others who’ve already bookmarked the page, as well as a fresh list of the top tags applied.

Visitors can click on the count to see more detail on who bookmarked your page, when they did it, and how they tagged it. The list of tags shows visitors why your page is interesting, and clicking on a tag takes them to similar sites on del.icio.us.

how do i get one?

At the time of this launch, you’ve got an out-of-box choice of two CSS-based presentations shown in screenshot form above:

1. A rectangular badge, suitable for sidebars and inset information displays.
2. A single line, intended for use at the end of stories and blog entries.

Whichever one you choose, you can copy our example code for either of these and just paste it into your pages or templates. The Tagometer will automatically populate itself from the location and title it finds on the page where you’ve given it a home.

If you’ve got a bit more advanced DOM scripting, JSON, and CSS chops – try taking a look under the hood. The folks over at FeedBurner, for instance, have already built a new FeedFlare unit that incorporates the JSON feed data. We’re trying out a few new things here that should make customizing the Tagometer easier for web developers, while at the same time working to maintain a simple copy-and-paste option.

Try it out, let us know what you think, and tell us if you’ve got any ideas on improving this new tool.

67 comments December 20th, 2006

im in ur serverz, upgradin ur bookmarkz

As part of our efforts to make del.icio.us even faster, we’re moving to a new set of servers this Sunday (12/17). This will require a brief site outage, which will begin at 12:00 noon Pacific and is expected to last two hours. We will be posting updates to this blog throughout the process. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We’ll get it done as fast as possible.

Updates:

12:10 PST We’ve brought the site down and have begun doing upgrades.

12:46 PST Adding more servers …

1:05 PST Reticulating splines

1:51 PST Almost done, working on a few problems

1:59 PST Getting ready to bring the site back up

2:06 PST Brought RSS back up

2:23 PST Brought API back up

2:38 PST Main site is back up. Doing some cleanup behind the scenes.

3:06 PST All done. Please let us know if you see any problems.

52 comments December 14th, 2006

microconference

Because we don’t all get together enough and talk about important nerd topics, we and our Yahoo! compatriots have started a series of microconferences, entitled confab.yahoo, which will be open to all and be held in the evenings and early in the week (so you don’t have the excuse of needing to go to important parties).

The first in this series, on Dec 13 at 5:30pm, is a discussion on Prediction Markets, moderated by James Surowiecki. Please sign up and join me next week.

A prediction market is like a stock market for ideas or information.
The market rewards good information whether it comes from elites or the
masses. Prediction markets have built a track record of besting pundits
and pollsters when it comes to predicting everything from political
elections to quarterly sales figures.

From the announcement:

Join us for a public “how to” session on prediction markets¹ moderated by James Surowiecki, New Yorker columnist and best-selling author of The Wisdom of Crowds.

Bo Cowgill from Google, Leslie Fine from HP, Todd Proebsting from Microsoft, and Dave Pennock from Yahoo! will describe how they are using prediction markets to aid corporate forecasting and decision making.

Other speakers include Chris Hibbert, the developer of Zocalo, an open source prediction market platform; Adam Siegel, the co-founder of InklingMarkets.com, a Paul Graham yCombinator startup, and Robin Hanson, the visionary economist and inventor whose pioneering work paved the way.

The event will emphasize practical lessons and hands-on advice. After brief presentations from each speaker, Surowiecki will open up the session for discussion with the audience.

7 comments December 8th, 2006