Is anyone out there?

Finding a social bookmarking buddy is like trying to find a crush's profile on Facebook. It involves fact-checking, a degree of uncertainty, a lot of cyber-stalking, and the other person probably doesn't even know you're trying to find them.

But that was our assignment, so after trawling arenas such as Diigo and Delicious, it seems that AfghanVeracity comes the closest to being my social bookmarking buddy in that their bookmarks almost exclusively cover political and social issues in Afghanistan. Looking at their tags, they like to cover topics such as:

• Women
• DVDlist
• Non-profit
• Booklist
• Military_Policy
• News
• Activists
• DOD
• Military_Experience
• US_Gov't

Their chosen bookmarks often lean towards a focus on women, especially women in the military whom are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Issues can range from the role of women in the military, to how women are adapting to social changes in Afghanistan and what challenges remain. My research focus wasn't going to be that gender-specific, but these sources do provide an interesting perspective.

AfghanVeracity's account also stood out because most of their bookmarks also come with a small blurb about what the article or link is about, which helps me figure out what the content is because I am lazy and may not want to read it myself. For example, NewsHour: Women in Combat Numbers Increase is bookmarked with the concise "Intv. with Female Vet, talks about working with local women", so I instantly know it will be along the lines of a transcript with a veteran soldier. If that's what I want, I can click on it. And in this case I did, which revealed a very insightful look into how female soldiers have dealt with both the pressures of combat and serving along male comrades whom may or may accept women serving in the front line.

The blurbs are particularly useful in AfghanVeracity's case because a lot of their links are not to articles, but to websites of organisations and institutions such as the Afghan Women's Mission, which provides more practical advice on how to support such issues such as schools and health clinics for girls, as well as contextual information.

Maybe I was trying to be too picky about what would be a close bookmarking buddy, since beggars can't really be choosers, but sadly, there have been no updates on AfghanVeracity's account since May, so it is highly possible that the account is defunct and there won't be any new bookmarks in the near future. There are also only 32 bookmarks, which is not a bad number for a timespan of 2 months, but 2 months is the entire account history. And the majority of bookmarks were created in a single spree on 23 April 2010. Nevertheless, after checking out what links already exist, I think I can still put it to good use for my research in the social aspects of Afghanistan.