Social Hoarding: It's not what you think, or is it?

Once again, I found myself reading an assignment for class and trailing off in thought. This time I was reading about digital collections and Web 2.0 tools available for collecting. As I was reading the assignment and various articles on digital collecting and curating educational resources, I had to laugh at the definition of collection. A few days ago, my family was watching a Netflix series on hoarding. One of the kids asked how the house got to be so full of stuff. My boyfriend proceeded to say, "this is what happens when you collect things." So with the conversation fresh in my mind, I thought about digital collecting turning into hoarding.

I Googled "social hoarding" and "digital hoarding" to see what information was available. In a quick scan, two articles came up that appealed to my interest. Oh, I did end up creating an account with Diigo to "collect" my searches more easily, rather than bookmarking to my browser or emailing myself the link. 

Both articles elude to social/digital hoarding as collecting social interactions. These include: emails, photos, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc.

As I was reading the articles, I expected to learn more about the Web 2.0 tools like Diigo or Pintrest that users are collecting information on but never using or the use of browser bookmarking. I was not successful in my quick search for find in particular information. But I did come across questions to consider in the two articles I did read:

• Do you keep every email, "just in case?"
• Do you collect Facebook friends, even though you don't know them (anymore)?
• Are you obsessed with followers on Twitter and Instagram?
  

The article by Mallet (2012) takes the approach of social digital hoarding to be a psychological disorder, no different than physical hoarding.

I'm guilty of hoarding tendencies in the sense of "collecting" sites (URLs) as bookmarks in various places and forgetting about them and where I saved them. Never to return to them. I think tools like Diigo and Pintrest are useful. My lack of digital organization is due to my lack in keeping up with all the tools once I am introduced. For example, I created an account with Diigo. Will I continue to use it beyond this class? I'd like to say yes, but being honest with my previous experiences using Web 2.0 platforms...probably not. But I may surprise myself! A lot of my continued use of a tool has to do with the usability. Diigo appears to be easy to use.