Internet and Businesses Articles

Social bookmarking can be justifiably considered the building of the future social Web. On the social Web, fame may be fleeting as with all socially-driven popularity contests. Some bloggers try so hard to bolster their respective blogs up the social networking popularity ladder, by coming up with adroit titles and gimmicks to entice people to bookmark their posts, thereby stepping up traffic. The downside of this, however, is that unless incoming traffic finds something worthwhile to return to, people won’t come back. It’s a one day wonder, flash in the pan.

Getting lots of traffic and comments on a Web site is indeed addictive. So is the interaction with social bookmarking sites as one witness posts climb up the ranks, and then subsequently fall. This addiction is comparable to the one experienced in day trading on the stock market.

Others bookmark everything of interest to them, as if bookmarking alone is a contest. How many did you bookmark today?

These bookmarked posts are saved to the social bookmarking service under an account name, so one can “make note” of posts and articles of interest if the need arises of revisiting them later or recommending them to others. If one gets tired of a particular link or made use of the content, then one takes it out from your list, thereby losing a point in their score.

In addition to the social popularity contest of bookmarking services, it does help keep track interesting posts as you trek around the Internet so one can revisit them. Instead of saving all these Web pages to the PC hard drive, or adding their URL/addresses to bookmarks or favorites of the Web browser—which may be lost if the hard drive crashes—one can store them offsite on a social bookmarking service.

Many social bookmarking services work interactively with each other, allowing people to save a bookmark in their service, and have it simultaneously be saved to corresponding accounts on other social bookmarking services.

Some social bookmarking services feature installable toolbars to help you find interesting content and bookmark a web page you are viewing faster. There are also javascript bookmarklets which you can click and drag to your browser’s bookmarks panel or toolbar for one click submission to the social bookmarking service of your choice.

Currently, almost all social bookmarking services are free. They feature ads on their sites and some are starting to offer member services to get you to pay to get more features. Rumors are that some social bookmarking services are starting to charge for “top of the rank” placement in a “featured” location. It will be interesting to see how these services evolve and change.

Earl Juanico http://www.wirefan.com