Talkings of a Tyrant

Yahoo’s My Web 2.0 has been out for a while. It wasn’t until I read PC Mag’s comparison of different tagging services that I actually considered using it (I tend to avoid Yahoo! services, and I’m starting to do the same with Google).

So I transfered my Del.icio.us bookmarks over and started to try it out. I couldn’t find any bookmarklets, (like the one del.icio.us has) so I barely used it at first. But then I found Blummy, a strange, but excellent, bookmarklet applet and started away.

While PCMag gives My Web 2.0 glowing reviews I tend to disagree. The basic premise of Web 2.0 is that the community be involved. Del.icio.us integrates that well by using folksonomy to suggest which tags you use. It will show a list of your tags, a list of popular tags, a list of suggested tags for you to pick from, and still allows you to make up a new tag.

Del.icio.us’s ‘popular’ page ranks items by trends of recent tagging. For example, if tomorrow, 100 people were to bookmark this page using del.icio.us in 1 hour, then that would be booted near the top. This site would only have 101 votes, but because it is a recent trend, then it would be marked as “popular.”

My Web 2.0, however, has the Yahoo search engine suggest tags (or so it seems), which isn’t in the spirit of web 2.0 Their “popular” page, is really a page of the most bookmarked pages they’ve got. Also, I can’t figure out how to remove a tag from a particular item, but I’ll let it go because it’s beta.

My Web 2.0 has 2 good things going for it. The first, is it looks better. Del.icio.us, I hate to admit it (not really), looks ugly. Second, it saves a copy of the web page, so if the web page is ever lost then you still have a copy.

Del.icio.us has been taking strides recently to release more features. The search bar is now open to all users, and supports the AND operator. The site has gotten much more explanatory, too. They are working hard, and show no signs of stopping.

All in all, I like del.icio.us more. It has much more web 2.0 ideals and folksonomy integrated into it, and some features that I can’t do without. Perhaps if My Web 2.0 were to get much better, then I would change my mind, but for now…