So, I’ve been using del.icio.us for a little while now, and I’m very impressed. I don’t know how I lived without this before, when I was stuck in the dark ages of offline bookmarks and always worrying about how I’d synchronize my bookmarks between my computers and wondering how I’d combine them and their many (overlapping) categories. It was an organizational nightmare, but I put up with it because, well, I’m a neat freak and like organizing stuff.

Del.icio.us changes all of that. Being a Google fanboy, I first tried out their bookmarks service, which was functional and tidy but very spartan at the same time. While it supports multiple tags, a crucial feature in my mind, and has some pretty neat browser plugins available, it lacks many of the features that del.icio.us has, such as bundles (will get to that later), and sharing/syndication of your links. So, after fully switching to del.icio.us and manually transferring the handful of links I’d accumulated on Google bookmarks, I’m fully in del.icio.us and loving it.

First of all, adding links is super-easy with the provided browser plugins, and accessing them is just as easy. Finding links is also a no-brainer, with a search tool easily visible. But perhaps the feature that really got me was the extensive support for tagging, bundling, and generally metadata stuff. You see, metadata is a huge topic on the Internet because with so much information, it’s hard to know how to find something unless there is information available about what that something is.

Del.icio.us makes it pretty easy, as each time you add a new bookmark you can tag it with a set of keywords that you define. You don’t have to make any categories or folders, as del.icio.us will automatically generate lists for you based on those keywords or “tags” that you enter for a bookmark. Another nice feature is “bundles”, which allow you to group together a certain set of tags under a common name, adding more to the organizational frenzy. Since I love organizing, I was definitely hooked on this. Furthermore, renaming an entire set of tags is easy and importing from your static set of bookmarks (from a browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox) is available as well. Kudos to the folks over there for making this service so easy and intuitive to use – a good online service is one thing, but one that has a good interface is another thing all together.

The service also has an extensive social networking component, with the main page displaying a hotlist of frequented links as a sort of “pulse” or trend-watch service. Sharing of bookmarks is also available and is good for bloggers who want to let others know what they’re reading, as this list can be syndicated or displayed on other sites easily.