Bookmarking is a way to organize, store, manage, and tag web content. Bookmarks can be made public, private, or accessible to a specified group of people.
Traditional bookmarking allows you to save URLs of sites you frequent or favor for quick and easy access within your browser. The primary disadvantage of traditional bookmarks is that they are saved only within your browser and are not easy to share. Social bookmarking overcomes this limitation by making it easy to store your bookmarks on a website accessible from anywhere, share them with others, and discover sites that people with related interests have validated as quality content.
Benefits of social bookmarking
Social bookmarking offers the following benefits:
Traditional bookmarking allows you to save URLs of sites you frequent or favor for quick and easy access within your browser. The primary disadvantage of traditional bookmarks is that they are saved only within your browser and are not easy to share. Social bookmarking overcomes this limitation by making it easy to store your bookmarks on a website accessible from anywhere, share them with others, and discover sites that people with related interests have validated as quality content.
- Keep found things found.
- Share insights and opinions.
- Drive traffic to content.
- Improve search visibility and ranking with keywords and tagging.
- Build your eminence and position yourself as an expert.
- Shape the conversation by defining topics and associations.
- Select your preferred bookmarking service. A few of the most popular tools are listed below.
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Upload your existing bookmarks (each service will provide specific upload
instructions and/or a simple upload tool). -
Install a browser plugin to simplify your bookmarking experience
or bookmark directly from your service of choice. - Begin bookmarking relevant content.
- Organize and classify your bookmarks through tagging.
- Share your bookmarks in multiple places through RSS.
- Browse and vote or rate content within your selected bookmarking service.
Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a family of web feed formats used by bloggers, podcasters, and news outlets to distribute their content.
RSS streamlines communication between publishers and readers. RSS readers aggregate feeds, making it easy for people to scan information.
The major benefit of RSS is that people opt in to content that suits their interests, controlling the communications they receive.
RSS feed aggregators, including Google Reader and Netvibes, allow users to view and scan streams of content quickly. Wikipedia has a comprehensive comparison of feed aggregators to get you started on your journey.
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