Social Bookmarking Tips 2

Internet Bookmarking

In the same way that you insert your bookmark on the last read page; or into an interesting article or passage you come across – you can also bookmark your favorite websites. Internet bookmarks are the web page locations or URLs that are retrievable.

 Bookmarks are a feature of all internet web browsers. The bookmarking function allows you to save an internet address that you have visited. They are saved by name, rather than by address. This makes it easier for you to recognize and access it later.

The web links that you save are known as ‘Favorites’ in Internet Explorer. The bookmark option is usually found in the top browser menu. However,along with the bookmarking methods that are a built in feature of your favorite web browser, there are also many external applications that help you save, catalogue

and access your web bookmarks.

Social Bookmarking

Following on from and building on simple browser based internet bookmarks, we come to shared bookmarks. These are a means for bringing together internet users who share similar interests. Using social bookmarking, such users can pool their resources on the web, and this is what social bookmarking is all about at its most basic level. The bookmarks are not stored on a particular computer but they are instead created and stored on a remote web server. They are effectively stored on an external website that can be accessed anywhere.

Social bookmarking websites are also a kind of social network. It is a means by which users can search, share, organize and store web pages that have
bookmarked by themselves or other people. It simply refers to the various web based applications that allow you to store a record of your web bookmarks online, rather than saving them in ‘favorites’ on your computer at home or in the office.

Therefore, these bookmarks are usually public although this will vary between the different social bookmarking services available. Some may allow bookmarks to be saved privately only, that is they are shared only with certain people in groups or

networks of your choosing, etc.

Users who enjoy access to a particular social bookmarking site can view the bookmarks chronologically, by categories (tags), through a search engine or just randomly. Tags are most commonly used on social bookmarking websites.

At a slightly higher level, for the purpose of sorting and filtering the many bookmarks on a social bookmarking website, they are grouped under broad categories. These categories are what are most commonly termed tags. They may be words of

phrases which can help you find the same link later and also provide a list of similar websites with the same ‘tag’.

Tags are nearly the same as keywords, yet they are slightly different. When keywords for a web page are created, you are trying to match the words or phrases to the information you are looking for, and of course you hope that this will yield the results you need.

However, suppose when you enter the words ‘celebrity gossip’. You will gets thousands of unrelated websites that simply contain the words ‘celebrity gossip’ somewhere in their content. Tags are categories not key words.

 They are labeling a certain ‘type’ of website, not searching the website content for the keywords – which may actually yield many useless results.

Many of the social bookmarking services actively encourage you to organize your bookmarks by way of tags instead of folders as in browsers. Bookmarks are
categorized according to tags and include information about how many people have tagged that bookmark.

Similarly, most of the leading social bookmarking websites create web feeds for their database of bookmarks which enables users to be instantly aware of the latest bookmarks that may be of interest to them as they are saved, shared and tagged by

users.

Social bookmarking services have grown increasingly popular. Many websites have added features like rating and comments regarding the bookmarks, emailing bookmarks, etc.