Social bookmarking is a unique and revolutionary way for online users to store, compile, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In this new and modern system, Internet users save links to Web pages that they want to remember and/or share. Many social bookmarking sites have Web feeds, which are provided for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags.

This service helps subscribers become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users. As these services have grown more popular and have evolved further, these sites have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, e-mailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.

Tips In Getting Started with Social Bookmarking

Today, there are many social bookmarking sites on the Internet, and joining them is generally free. Probably the largest site today is del.icio.us. To register, simply click on the "register" link and fill in the information. Members of these sites should also install the two buttons on their browsers at home to make the process of tagging pages easier. Click on the help tab to find out more information.

Most Bookmarking Sites Are User-Friendly

Most bookmarking sites are free and very easy to use. It only takes a few minutes to join one of these sites. New members are usually asked to provide their e-mail address and a password. Members can post and review their bookmarks from any computer on the Internet. Individuals can also download and save all of their bookmarks for security. Bookmarks can also be easily transferred from one bookmarking service to another. Sharing is what makes social bookmarking so powerful.

More often than not, it is Web user who allows their tagged bookmarks to be available for public viewing, and this results in links to sites of generally better quality. Some bookmarking sites allow members to rank the site's usefulness as well. Usually, the quality of a site over time, may be more easily discovered by recommendations from individuals rather than depending on standard search methods like Google, which usually measures the value of a site by the number of visits.

How To Steer Clear Of Unscrupulous Bookmarking Sites And Methods

According to industry analysts, social bookmarking can also be prone to corruption, misuse and collusion, and due to its rising popularity, some users have started considering it as a tool to use along with black-hat search engine optimization methods, to make their Web sites more visible. The more often a Web page is submitted and tagged, the higher the chances it has of being found.

Spammers have started bookmarking the same Web page multiple times and/or tagging each page of their web site using a lot of popular tags, thereby obliging the developers to constantly adjust their security system to overcome abuses. Because of this, some social bookmarking websites were forced to institute safety measures against spam, which caused some problems for people who use social bookmarking for legitimate, non-spamming purposes.

In addition, there are also drawbacks to such tag-based systems as well; no standard set of keywords, also known as controlled vocabulary, no standard for the structure of such tags (e.g. singular vs. plural, capitalization, etc.), mistagging due to spelling errors, tags that can have more than one meaning.


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