What do you do when you happen to a bump into a website that instantly becomes your favorite, or a website that you find valuable for future reference? Well, you bookmark it, right? Just like how you bookmark a page of a book so that you can get back to it easily. When you bookmark a website, you save and organize it on your PC. It has a disadvantage, though. When you use somebody else's PC, you will not be able to access your bookmarks. It is pretty, inconvenient, right?
Then here comes social bookmarking, a term coined by del.icio.us in the late 2003. Social bookmarking, as the phrase implies, still allows you to save and organize your favorite sites, not on your PC but on a bookmarking site. And, there is so much to it than plain bookmarking.
Social bookmarking is made interesting mainly because of the adjective "social". This means that in social bookmarking, you get to interact with other Internet users. You have to sign up first to a social bookmarking site. There are different bookmarking sites that would be willing to have you as their member. These include StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, and Reddit. These sites would generally ask for a user name and password only; yes, they are free!
After saving and organizing your bookmarks, you can choose to keep it private or make them public. When you choose to make them public, other users get to see them. You can also share your bookmarks with a specific group of people. Here is another fun feature of most social bookmarking sites: You get to rate other users' bookmarks and you get to comment on them, too. This interaction among Internet users may result to the formation of peer communities, each of which is joined together by common interest. Another advantage of social bookmarking is that you can access your bookmarks even if you are not using your own PC. All you have to do is log on to the bookmarking site you belong to, and you can visit your favorite sites again.
Social bookmarking has indeed been effective in bringing people to one site together that it is now being used as an online marketing strategy, but that's another story here is some social bookmarking training.
You may still stick with the old bookmarking ways, but how can you miss the fun of having your friends and other Internet users share with you their favorite sites as well sharing yours with them?
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