Practicum - Sasha: Wraping Up (7)

This is my final practicum blog, and it's been quite the journey. As a lover of lists, random facts, and obscure cultures, Stumbling (and other exploration on different social bookmarking sites) was a ton of fun.

On the whole, I've found that social bookmarking sites can be made into whatever you want them to be. If you're bored and trying to kill time, StumbleUpon is probably for you. If you know of a specific topic you want to know more about, Del.icio.us is probably a good place to start. If you like a little competition in your browsing, the voting system on Digg might be something you'll enjoy.

One aspect of social bookmarking sites I touched on in my discussion presentation was the idea of social networking through these social bookmarking sites. This is something I didn't have very high hopes for, and I was proven right. These bookmarks are things I shared with friends, and bonded with people I already knew (sometimes people I didn't expect) over Facebook when I shared them, but the main point is the fact that I was connecting with people I was already acquainted with.
I didn't get any friend requests or followers in my time on StumbleUpon (I didn't make profiles for any of the other sites, just browsed them), and I probably wouldn't have accepted a friend request even if I had gotten one. I don't like the idea of someone I can't see getting to know too much about me based on my 'likes' and my personal profile. As a matter of fact, now that this project is over, I'm going to be removing most of the 'About Me' information from my SU profile.

I certainly learned a lot, as well as killed a lot of time while doing this practicum assignment. I was fond of social bookmarking sites before I started, and have grown as a user, and can hopefully get more out of them in the future. While I won't be abandoning StumbleUpon as my go-to social bookmarking site, I know now about other sites for other needs I might have.
If you don't have a SU profile, and have a medium-to-short attention span or are prone to boredom or long bouts of sitting around with nothing to do, I highly recommend jumping on the bandwagon.