Social Bookmarking

What is Social Bookmarking?

If you spend a lot of time on the web, you probably have some favorite websites-- places you like to visit now and again or places you want to share with friends or colleagues. Unless you have a stellar memory, you most likely save the addresses of these sites using the Favorites or Bookmarks folder on your browser. This method is great if you only ever use one computer, but if you want to access your work bookmarks at home, or your home bookmarks at work, you're out of luck!

Social bookmarking allows you to save your favorite sites on the web so you can get to them from any computer anywhere in the world. Simply create a free account with a social bookmarking site (del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Reddit) and start marking your links. Many of these services have "bookmarklets", little one-click buttons, you can add to your browser to make bookmarking your favorite sites even easier.

Well, that's the bookmarking part-- what about the "social" aspect?

When you bookmark a website using a service like del.icio.us, Furl or others, you not only save it to your own personal account, you are also making the site public-- announcing, in a sense, "this website is notable-- check it out!". The homepages of social bookmarking sites generally display the most popular items at any given time. You can use these lists to discover new websites or expand your interest in a topic. Not interested in declaring your favorite websites to the world? No problem-- most services allow you to make your bookmarks "private".

What is Tagging?

If you have a lot of bookmarks saved to your computer, you may use folders to organize your favorites by topic or other criteria. Social bookmarks generally rely on user-generated keywords or "tags" for organization. The advantage of assigning tags to a bookmarked website, rather than placing it in a folder, is that the link to this website can now reside in multiple places. Take a look at this del.icio.us bookmark for a gardening website:

It has four tags-- words that I have chosen to describe the site. Now, I don't have to remember the name of the site, just that one of the keywords. This method of assigning keywords to your bookmarks can come in handy if you have dozens or hundreds of items bookmarked.

Video: Social Bookmarking in Plain English

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Characteristics of Social Bookmarking

Bookmarklets
Tagging
Shareable
RSS feeds available

What is Social Bookmarking good for?

Keeping track of sites that interest you
Organzing resources for a project that you're working on
Sharing websites with colleagues
Discovering new websites on a topic

Examples of Social Bookmarking

del.icio.us http://del.icio.us
Digg http://digg.com
Furl http://furl.net
Reddit http://reddit.com
StumbleUpon http://stumbleupon.com

Activity

Set up a social bookmarking account

Go to del.icio.us-- http://del.icio.us
Click "Register" in the upper right-hand corner
Create a username, enter your real name, a password, and your email address
Click "Register"
At the top of the screen, click "Post"
Type "http://www.blogswikisandmore.pbwiki.com" into the URL box
Click "Save"
Enter a description (usually the name of the website or webpage)
Type some notes to describe the website
Create a couple tags that you will use to index this bookmark (e.g.: social_software, library, workshop, wiki)
Click "Save"
Be sure to check your email and verify your address through the message that del.icio.us has sent to you
You now have a del.icio.us account where you can save and view your favorite websites online from any computer in the world!

Advanced Steps

del.icio.us extension

Firefox: Go to http://del.icio.us/help/firefox/extensionnew

Internet Explorer: Go to http://del.icio.us/help/ie/extension

These browser extensions will allow you to integrate your computer's existing favorites into del.icio.us and make adding new bookmarks very easy. With just one click you can automatically add the URL and name of the page that you are on to your del.icio.us account-- all you have to do is add tags.

Bookmarklets

Go to http://del.icio.us/help/buttons

Drag the bookmarklet buttons to your Bookmark toolbar. Thes buttons will allow you to "tag" sites and view your bookmarks easily.