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. However, many people don't realize that they can also share these bookmarks with other people who are interested in the same things they are. However, sharing one's bookmarks actually has many more benefits than most people realize, which is why people should find out everything they can on social bookmarking and decide if it's right for them.

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 you make a bookmark on a browser, all it does is save it to that browser; however, when saving a bookmark to a social network, it saves it onto that website itself, giving others access to it. These sites also using something known as “tagging” - a system of one word or one phrase descriptions that categorize a website; words like “videos” or “recipes” can be used as tags, and entries with the same tags become grouped together on the site. These sites also have networks - in other words, groups of people who may not have met in the real world can share information about the same subject because they are part of a network for a certain topic, such as antique cars.

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. But when the website known as Delicious in 2003, the concept of social bookmarking truly blossomed - it was Delicious that truly revolutionized the tagging system and coined the term “social bookmarking.” This special tagging system allowed people to not only use tags but to also use tweet clouds, which are basically main categories that tags are filed under to make navigating them easier.

These social bookmarking sites have many advantages. The sties can be searched using generic search terms and it will turn up results, for instance. And the system itself makes navigating sites easier, since clicking on a specific tag gets rid of all unrelated tags. Social bookmarking allows people to share their favorite websites without even speaking the same language.