Social Bookmarking – What Is It?

Social bookmarking is the collection of resources used by web surfers online. This is not file sharing, as the resources are saved by a single solitary user who can only reference these resources at a later date. This is very similar to folksonomy which is also called social tagging. This is by which the user’s information of the sites and resources which are interested to them which they save. Users may also add descriptions through the form of metadata. Metadata is shared through keywords.

The concept of social booking came about in 1996. The first online bookmarking site was called ItList, which included private and public bookmarking features. Now in a social bookmarking setting, when a link to a web page is saved or shared, the bookmark is created. These are usually public links which can be shared on most social media pages or sites. You can also set your account settings so that only certain people or specific groups can see your bookmarks. Of course you can even mark your settings so that only you and no-one else can see your bookmarks. You can also set your bookmarks with specific tags which are used to organize them. You can hold your bookmarks in folders and set in categories by using these tags. These tags can also link you to other bookmarks. Then by clicking on the tag, which is a link will take you to a list of similar bookmarks for related websites.

Most social websites also provide web feeds for their bookmark listings. This also includes the organized tags and when you or other users subscribe to these tags then receive e-mail alerts which update and make them aware of new updates to the pages they have bookmarked. In recent years these bookmarking services have changed, becoming more enhanced as well as having extra features added to the feature of bookmarking.

Now you can import and export your bookmarks from social networking sites as well as e-mail them to yourself and other people as well as incorporate them into other social networking sites you may be using.

As good as social bookmarking is it can also be abused and used for the wrong purposes. Social bookmarking can be corrupted and become entwined with other bookmarks of other sites. This happens because the more tags you use for a bookmark the higher a site will climb on most search engines. This attracts spammers to use and tag pages multiple times.

By: Mark J Gregory

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Mark Gregory is writing on behalf of Marketing By Web; an online marketing company specialising in ppc management service and adwords ppc management