dude, check this out!

Yesterday, I came across Dude, Check This Out!™, which enables sort of a cross between blogging and social networking (a la Friendster, LinkedIn, FOAF, etc.). You create your own blog on the service for saving links to interesting articles, sites, images, etc., and you’re encouraged to copy links from other Dude blogs; the site then uses its search engine technologies to suggest other links in which it thinks you would be interested (similar to the technology on Amazon that makes recommendations on other items you might like, based on the other items bought by other Amazon customers who selected the same item you did). It also allows you to make links directly to and with other Dude bloggers, creating social networks of shared interests.

I think I’ll continue to use this blog, elf-reflection, just as I always have, as my primary online venue for expressing my thoughts and feelings. However, I am going to play around with my Dude blog, “serendipity :: a journey of elf discovery,” for maintaining quick links to interesting links and resources.

Serendipity also has its own RSS feed, for use in syndication or within an aggregator.

[Admittedly, one problem with Dude…! is that it currently only works with IE on Windows.]

[Update 2004-01-17: As noted by commenter Randy, there is indeed a solution for Mozilla.]