Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share and search internet bookmarks. An internet bookmark is a saved link to a favourite web page or web site.

 

When you move your mouse over our bookmark icon found on the top right hand side of every page of this website, you will see a list of popular social bookmarking systems or networks.

 

Registration is free! When you have registered on any one of these, you are able to store lists of internet resources that you find useful.

 

You are then able to make your list available to other users of your network.

 

It means that other users with similar interests can view the links by topic, category, tags, or even randomly.

 

Other than web page bookmarks, services specialized to a specific subject or format - feeds, blogs, books, videos, shopping items, map locations, wineries, etc. - can be found.

 

In 2005 and 2006, social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Ma.gnolia, Netvouz and StumbleUpon became popular.

 

Sites like reddit, Digg, Newsvine and the Netscape portal apply social bookmarking to news items. In 2007, IBM announced plans to enter the social software market.

 

You can see from the drop down list on our icon just how many new sites have arrived on the scene.

In a social bookmarking system, users store links to web pages that they find useful, much in the same way as you add a favourite website in your browser.

 

These link lists are either accessible to the public or a specific network and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

 

They also categorize their resources by the use of informally assigned, user-defined keywords or tags.

 

Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them.

 

Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another.

 

Its increasing popularity and competition have extended the services to offer more than just sharing bookmarks, such as rating, commenting, the ability to import and export, add notes, reviews, email links, automatic notification, feed subscription, web annotation, create groups and social networks.

 

Many social bookmarking networks now offer downloadable toolbars where a simple click will add your selected webpage to your favourites on your favourite portal.

When you subscribe to any of these bookmarking sites you have the ability to create your very own list of favourite websites.

 

This means rather than relying on the favourites stored in your browser (which you risk losing should your computer ever fail), you can store all of your favourites in a system made for just that purpose.

 

Search on any one of these networks for other people interested in the same things that you are.

 

You'll be surprised what you can find and what friends you might be able to make in the process.

We like del.icio.us and tecnorati, but many users might feel comfortable with Microsoft's Windows Live Favourites (where you can use your Hotmail or Windows Passport credentials to log in) or Google Bookmarks.

 

Happy bookmarking!