What is it?
Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a
public Web site and “tagging” them with keywords. Bookmarking,
on the other hand, is the practice of saving the address of
a Web site you wish to visit in the future on your computer. To
create a collection of social bookmarks, you register with a social
bookmarking site, which lets you store bookmarks, add tags of
your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as public or
private. Some sites periodically verify that bookmarks still work,
notifying users when a URL no longer functions. Visitors to social
bookmarking sites can search for resources by keyword, person,
or popularity and see the public bookmarks, tags, and classification
schemes that registered users have created and saved.
Who is doing it?
Social bookmarking dates back just a couple of years, when sites
like Furl, Simpy, and del.icio.us began operating. Other social
bookmarking sites include de.lirio.us, an open source version of
del.icio.us, and citeulike, a social bookmarking site for academic
papers. Social bookmarking is particularly useful when collecting
a set of resources that are to be shared with others. Anyone can
participate in social bookmarking.
How does it work?
Social bookmarking opens the door to new ways of organizing
information and categorizing resources. The creator of a bookmark
assigns tags to each resource, resulting in a user-directed,
“amateur” method of classifying information. Because social
bookmarking services indicate who created each bookmark and
provide access to that person’s other bookmarked resources,
users can easily make social connections with other individuals
interested in just about any topic. Users can also see how many
people have used a tag and search for all resources that have
been assigned that tag. In this way, the community of users over
time will develop a unique structure of keywords to define resources—
something that has come to be known as a “folksonomy.”
Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a
public Web site and “tagging” them with keywords. Bookmarking,
on the other hand, is the practice of saving the address of
a Web site you wish to visit in the future on your computer. To
create a collection of social bookmarks, you register with a social
bookmarking site, which lets you store bookmarks, add tags of
your choice, and designate individual bookmarks as public or
private. Some sites periodically verify that bookmarks still work,
notifying users when a URL no longer functions. Visitors to social
bookmarking sites can search for resources by keyword, person,
or popularity and see the public bookmarks, tags, and classification
schemes that registered users have created and saved.
Who is doing it?
Social bookmarking dates back just a couple of years, when sites
like Furl, Simpy, and del.icio.us began operating. Other social
bookmarking sites include de.lirio.us, an open source version of
del.icio.us, and citeulike, a social bookmarking site for academic
papers. Social bookmarking is particularly useful when collecting
a set of resources that are to be shared with others. Anyone can
participate in social bookmarking.
How does it work?
Social bookmarking opens the door to new ways of organizing
information and categorizing resources. The creator of a bookmark
assigns tags to each resource, resulting in a user-directed,
“amateur” method of classifying information. Because social
bookmarking services indicate who created each bookmark and
provide access to that person’s other bookmarked resources,
users can easily make social connections with other individuals
interested in just about any topic. Users can also see how many
people have used a tag and search for all resources that have
been assigned that tag. In this way, the community of users over
time will develop a unique structure of keywords to define resources—
something that has come to be known as a “folksonomy.”
