Social Bookmarking 101

One of the best aspects of the internet is its ability to allow people to share information with each other – and one of the best ways to do this is to use bookmarks to save a page to come back to later. People use them to keep track of websites that have interesting information; it’s easier to make a bookmark than it is to memorize or write down the address of the website. For most people, bookmarks are private things and it never crosses their mind to share these bookmarks with others. As people do more research on social bookmarking, it becomes apparent that using social bookmarking sites is one of the best ways to share information – and to obtain information as well.

In today’s technology-dependent world, passing information quickly and efficiently is very important and social bookmarking is one of the best ways to do this. When someone makes a bookmark on a social bookmarking site, they are also able to do something unique – they can give the bookmark a special description that tells others what the site is about and why it’s a good site to visit when you’re looking for information. You can also add something very important to these bookmarks – a unique description that can be used to explain why the page has good information and why it is a good resource to use. These sites also use a special “tagging” system where, one word or one phrase labels can be added to the bookmark like “recipe” or “review”; this is a way of categorizing the bookmarks so that they are grouped together if they are about the same subject, which makes them easier to sort through and find.

The concept of social bookmarking isn’t new – the seeds were planted in 1996, when the website known as iList was first launched. Within three years of this, the demand for ways of sharing information across the internet became so strong that several other companies based on social networking also launched. However, it was Delicious in 2003 that really revolutionized the tagging system and catapulted it to real popularity – it even spawned the term “social bookmarking.” Their tagging system now only allows the use of normal tags but also of something called “tag clouds” – categories that related tags can be filed under to make seeing using them easier.

These social bookmarking sites have many advantages. They can be searched for keywords so people can find bookmarks saved by total strangers, which cuts down the amount of time people spend searching for the perfect website. And the system itself is truly brilliant – for instance, people can create a tag cloud called “recipes” and then in this tag cloud they can add the tags “dessert” and “appetizer” since they are related. Being able to do this helps both friends and total strangers share information about all manners of things.