Networking for Geeks: Finding the Bleeding Edge through del.icio.us

Posted on September 19th, 2005 by Sacha Chua

Want to plunge into a field? Here’s how to figure out who the early
adopters are and what you should be reading in order to get on the
bleeding edge.

What are people paying attention to?
del.icio.us tells you what’s the latest and
greatest. Find out which tags match your interests and subscribe to
them.

_Who_ are people paying attention to? Click on the “… and
1487 other people” in del.icio.us link descriptions and you’ll get a
list of all the people who bookmarked something. Take a look at the
people who first picked it up and you’ll get a good idea of who to
watch. Even better: use CollaborativeRank to automatically find the ‘experts’ on a certain tag: people who link to helpful/timely URLs early.
For example, CollaborativeRank lists the following experts on “philippines”: 1. eclair, 2. eastwestinvest, 3. MrShark, 4. alxklo, 5. schee. Check out their bookmarks and inboxes!

Keep an eye out for people who are cited again and again. For example,
productivity posts by Steve Pavlina and
Merlin Mann often ripple through the
blogosphere as they get quoted and commented on. Also look for people
who filter far more information and repost significant items. Add them
to your newsfeed in order to get a news digest of all the other sites out there!

How do _they_ get their news? You’ve found your experts. How do
they get _their_ news? Check their del.icio.us inboxes. If you can
find their websites or e-mail addresses, send them a note asking how
they get their news. Then hook into those sources, if you can. Keep
going until you hit the people making the news in the first place! =)

That’s how you can find the bleeding edge using del.cio.us.

Next in Networking for Geeks: How to Write Fan Mail. ;)

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Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/2996

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