My Social Bookmarking Soul Mate

Even though I haven’t been able to find my real life soul mate (sad face), I have found my cyber soul mate. His name is Philip Rothman. I might not know what he looks like, where he lives, or what his favorite color is, but I do know that we have very similar interests. We both like long walks on the beach, watching movies, and laughing… just kidding, he is not my romantic soul mate. Unfortunately, I didn’t find him on eHarmony! But, like any great soul mate, we have a lot in common.

I found Philip through handy dandy Diigo. I went to “My Networks” and clicked on “Search Diigo users of interest”. Under “By Tags”, I typed in “housing” in the search engine. Diigo searched its users for people who were interested in topics related to housing. After searching a few pages, I stumbled upon Philip. He caught my eye. Some of his top tags are “financial crisis”, “recession”, “employment”, “housing”, “health care”, “real estate”, “monetary policy”, “forecasting” and “regulation”. While his tags are a little heavy on the financial side of things, he bookmarks a lot of sites and articles pertaining to housing.

Philip has a total of 2025 public bookmarks. He last bookmarked in 2010. I’m not sure why he hasn’t bookmarked recently, but he used to be very active with his bookmarking. Philip bookmarked almost every other day. He seemed to be very thorough with his bookmarking. He regularly commented on most of his bookmarks. Some of his comments are brief while others are very extensive and thorough. He came across like he was very passionate and fascinated with the housing and financial markets.

Back in April 21, 2010, I found it interesting that he bookmarked a blog post from Calculated Risk. Calculated Risk is currently on my blog list. I find the blog very educational and intriguing. I guess it’s true, great minds DO think alike! Philip is also very interested in professional blogs. He has a tendency to bookmark blogs from New York Times, WSJ, and Bloomberg. I also find these professional blogs helpful when I am researching information on housing.

Philip introduced me to Real Clear Markets. I had never heard of this website before. Ever since Philip directed me to it, I can’t get enough! It discusses news related to business, economics, housing, and finance. Every day Real Clear Markets posts different articles from TIME, The Economist, BusinessWeek, MarketWatch, Forbes, and Washington Post, to name a few. It is nice because you can go to one site to see what popular publications and newspapers are talking about. You can quickly see top stories and important news. It saves a lot of time. This site could be very useful to my readers! Thanks Philip!

Even though Philip has not bookmarked in a while, he frequently bookmarked during the housing crisis. It could be useful to go back and see what he was bookmarking about during that time. Past articles are just as important as current news pertaining to housing. It is interesting to track what blogs and other publications were predicting and commenting on when the bubble burst.