Here's Something Scary

As a CTO, people just assume I always use the latest and greatest technology.  So the other day when someone asked where they could find my del.icio.us account, I wasn't at all surprised.  They were, on the other hand, quite shocked to find out I didn't have one.

Now, if sites like Del.icio.us, or Digg are new to you, don't be alarmed.  These are part of a whole new swath of so-called "social" networking software, in which people share with each other their bookmarks, content rankings, categories, and general recommendations for content on the Web.  Each of these offer their own take on a familiar theme - getting the power of word-of-mouth built into the Web surfing experience.

As any marketer will tell you, word-of-mouth is one the most effective means of delivering your message and driving attention.  To be sure, I dove into sites like these some time ago.  And really, I do mean to set up an account one of these days. So why haven't I?

Well, to be honest, my bookmarks are terrible.  I seem to bookmark everything I never want to see again, and forget to bookmark the pages I desperately need to get back to.  I clean up, sort, re-sort, delete, and still have a total mess.  Sharing that nightmare with others is just too scary a thought for me...

In fact, what I really need is a way to automatically track back to pages that I know I've visited within the last few months. I'm always needing some citation or source that "I know I read somewhere" but now can't remember.  I try search, but it rarely works.  I mean, I'm not interested in all the articles about a topic, I already know the information I'm searching on. I'm just trying to find the specific source where I first read it.  Most search engines don't seem to care about that.

Which leads me to Google Desktop.  Another piece of latest greatest technology that I also don't use.  It might solve my "find source" problem, but I really don't want that kind of desktop invasion.  In the end, I deal with bookmarks, and lost pages pretty much manually.  That is, I go get a cup of coffee and hope I remember what site I was in when I last saw the page.  Eventually it comes to me, and I'm on my way.

The point of all this isn't to downplay the usefulness of social software, or new technology.  It's to stress that the way we work, what new technologies we reject, tolerate, or embrace, is often driven by the skeletons we keep locked away in our own closets.  So as scary as all this new stuff is, here's an even scarier thought: in today's world you're just going to have to cover everything - the new AND the old ways that people may use to find your information.

So with that, Happy Halloween!