Tuesday, September 18, 2012

What is a Social Bookmarking Website?


With all the new technology and web-based sites that seem to be popping up these days, sometimes it is difficult to keep them all straight.  There are networking websites, educational websites, purely social websites, and social networking websites.  We all know about Facebook, Buzzfeed, Myspace, Twitter, and Pinterest.  The question is:  what exactly IS a social bookmarking websites? 

The answer is fairly simple:  A social bookmarking website is a site where people can post links, or bookmarks, usually publicly, for people to see and use.  These bookmarks or links will lead to a web page or outside source.  The bookmarks use “tags”, where users can add descriptions or key words to make the links easier to find.  Probably the widest-known bookmark site right now would be Pinterest. Pinterest is a link site in which users browse pictures which are linked from other websites (or uploaded individually by
Pinterest users).  Users then “pin” these pictures to their own “boards” and others can see them, use them, or “pin” them for other users to see.  Each user can add a different “tag” to the picture when they pin it on their own wall. 

Another form of social bookmarking is something most people do every single day: sending links in emails.  This simple act of sharing the link to a different web site or page is also considered social bookmarking.  These are not typical bookmarking websites, but it is a way to save links online, and share links with other people – friends, family, co-workers, and employers.  In this light, email sites such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and others, could also be considered social bookmarking websites. 

Most social bookmarking sites focus on a wide variety of subjects, but some, such as Reddit, focus more on single pages or certain subjects (such as news or media). While these sites are examples of social bookmarking, they are not what is traditionally thought of as social bookmarking sites.  They are, however, a great tool for finding information that you need.  Sites such as Reddit, Digg, and Propeller are examples of social bookmarking sites that focus on news, politics, etc. They are a great source of information because everything is in one place.

All in all, social networking is becoming very common, and many people don't even know that they are using social bookmarking.  The placement of many links and "tags" in one place is causing a "takeover" of traditional search engines like Google.  The variety of tags and keywords, all done by human beings instead of computers, make them a valuable resource.


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