Social Bookmarks

You don't know what social bookmarks are? Icons related to social bookmarks now litter the web but, in my experience, "normal people" haven't got a clue what they are for. As I just added social bookmarking links to this site, I thought I'd better explain what they are...

What is "Social Bookmarking"?

As we browse the web, we often find interesting webpages that we bookmark, or add to favourites (the nomenclature depends on your preferred browser!). Links to these webpages are stored only on the present machine. When we another PC or laptop, we can't access them. These bookmarks are not transferable from home to work, or between friends.

Social networking sites, like Facebook, allow us to tag favourite webpages within websites. These can then be accessed from any computer you use. It is also easy to share them with friends and other people with similar interests, spreading the word about great sites you like! Some sites, such as delicious (formerly del.icio.us), were designed with the sole purpose of social bookmarking.

Popular social bookmarking sites that you might regularly see, include:

As an example, if you decide that this article on social bookmarks is brilliant, and you want to save a link for later and maybe want to share it with one or more of your friends (if you are lucky enough to have more than one!), then simply click on the appropriate social network icon to add it to your list. Depending on the social bookmarking site you are using, you can even share the link across to entire internet, potentially with people you don't even know.

Visit Wikipedia to read more about social networking and bookmarking.

The majority of social networking sites are completely free to use, although you need to register. It falls to personal preference for deciding which, if any, sites to register with. Each of the sites works slightly differently, and has different priorities or biases. Kaboodle, for example, is more oriented to shopping and products. You can learn more about which might be best for you from these links:

Delicious Register About
Digg Register About
DZone Register About
Kaboodle Register About
Facebook Register About
reddit Register About
StumbleUpon Register About

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