Guide to Social Bookmarking

You’ve probably noticed at the end of every post, there are a few links under where it says ’share this article’. If you have no idea what they mean, then hopefully by the time you’ve read this you’ll know a bit more.

Social Bookmarking is a term that describes how a number of sites are trying to organize the web in various ways using personal networks rather than computer algorithms.

If you want to find a new website, you can go to google.com, think of the appropriate keyword, enter that into the search box and get back a list of sites that Google’s algorithm thinks best meet what you are looking for. There’s nothing wrong with that, Google is of course a wonderful site and provided you can think of the right search terms to help find what you’re looking for, you will often find some very detailed and comprehensive information in the results they give you. But what if you don’t really know what you’re looking for? what if you only have a broad idea of finding something new that interests you, or information on a particular topic that you want to research in more broad terms? Enter social bookmarking.

While each site is different, they all work on much the same principle - that is, people like you vote on what articles, pictures, sites etc. they think are really good, and which ones they think aren’t so good. Those people then make friends in the network by finding other people who appear to have similar tastes, they connect with them, interact, meet their friends and eventually build up a large network of like-minded individuals that on the whole essentially decide what is worth looking at and what isn’t.

That’s a very basic view of it all, but essentially the suggested sites are made by real human beings and the site provides many ways you can explore this data, either in specific topics, or by similar interests with articles you have previously said you like.

Becoming a part of a social bookmarking community (or any social networking community for that matter), can be a very enjoyable, rewarding (and potentially time consuming) past time. For many regular users, some of these sites have replaced Internet forums, as you can get some great discussions going within a group of friends, and have complete control over who you want to (and don’t want to) interact with. It’s never been easier to be a part of a network of friends, not on the same scale or intimacy that these sites allow.

So how to get started?

I’ll briefly run through the four sites I have listed at the bottom of each article - they are some of the more popular ones, but there are so many more that you can join if you like.

Digg

Digg is a community based news/article popularity ranking website. You can share any article you like with other Digg users, and if they think the content is valuable they can vote their appreciation by ‘dgging it’.

An explanation of How Digg Works, can be found here or you can take a tour of their features here.

Reddit

Similar to Digg, Reddit is a community based news/article popularity site.

An extensive set of how to links on how to use Reddit can be found here.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is an online bookmarking site, essentially it has similar functionality to your bookmarks folder in your browser, except it is stored online (so you can access them no matter what computer you are on), and you can share them with other users and find sites recommended by other members of your community.

You can find a comprehensive help section for Del.icio.us here.

Stumble Upon

One of my favourites, Stumble Upon let’s you tag and review web pages as you come across things that you consider to be interesting. By looking at what other Stumble Upon users agree with your selections, you can start to build a community of like minded friends and see what other pages they think are cool - or just stumble through some of the collective communities selections under various topics that you are interested in.

An online demo on how Stumble Upon works can be found here.