Tech Ed 2008: Microsoft Touts Social Bookmarking

Ever tried to find technical resources on MSDN or TechNet? Chances are you have, and you've likely spent more time that you expected to find what you needed. The sheer volume of content is partly to blame, making it difficult to sort through it all.

Now Microsoft thinks it has the answer with a new social bookmarking feature that it unveiled today at Tech Ed 2008 Developers for MSDN, TechNet, and Expression. This new capability will make it easier for people to save, contribute to, and share links and articles from those resources. This capability may seem similar to URL aggregators like LinkBunch, but it provides a number of additional (and useful) features.

Here's what Microsoft product manager Dan Truax had to say about this new feature on his blog:

The bookmarking capability that will be previewed at Tech Ed is specific to MSDN, TechNet and Expression. We have three primary goals for this:

• Allow customers to save their favorite bookmarks for IT, Developer and Designer related content within Microsoft and across the internet.
• Allow customers to see what is viewed as important by their peers and experts in the community
• Provide customers appropriate recognition for the contributions they make to the community using our social capabilities

Truax points out that this new social bookmarking feature isn't the start of a new Microsoft product or platform, but is purely designed to help the MSDN, TechNet, and Expressions communities get the most out of using Microsoft's online technical resources. Sorting out the details of Microsoft's mushrooming product portfolio can be a full-time job, so Microsoft's decision to focus on the user experience first (and product marketing second, if at all) should be welcome news to developers.

Check out Microsoft's new social bookmarking functionality here.