What is Social Bookmarking?

If you are anything like me, when you here the words “social media”, your eyes glaze over and your mind begins to turn off. This term has been so abused as a buzz word in the news that it’s meaning has become diluted and almost impossible to define without being specific; Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn. With that being said, another term that I’ve heard many times before, and often ignored, recently caught my attention. That term is social bookmarking.

For those of you that are familiar with this idea already, please ignore my ignorance. For many years now, I’ve been one of those gals that simply bookmarks (adds to my favorite links) any site that I plan to go back and see again. Hence, every time I get a new computer (every couple of years), I usually lose a majority of those links and start all over again. Of course, forget about accessing my email from another computer that doesn’t have my favorites on it, because it just isn’t going to happen.

So, what is social bookmarking and what does it have to do with the problems I’m whining about above? Social bookmarking is a way of sharing, organizing, and managing your favorite links, using a website like Delicious, so that you always have access to them, no matter where you are or what computer you are on. I know, it doesn’t sound as sexy as Tweeting, but it really is helpful and extremely easy to setup.

Unlike the social aspect of Facebook, there really isn’t that much socializing going on here. What you really have is a tool to keep your links up to date and always accessible. I know what you are thinking, I don’t want to have to input all of my links into some stupid website; just don’t have the time. That’s what’s great about this, sites like Delicious will automatically import your favorites from your browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. Just as convenient, when you add a new site to your favorites, it will ask if you want to update your account right then and there.

The social aspect of social bookmarking is really the collective of bookmarks that these sites host. With over 5 million users and 150 million sites bookmarked, you can easily begin to see that some serious statistics can be applied regarding site popularity and relevance1. As users begin to share their bookmarks with other users, a certain synergy begins to happen when you get to see what peeks your friends’ interests. Let me tell you that I recently shared mine with my husband and it was an intimate experience, to say the least. Taking this a step further is sharing bookmarks with networks of people, so you begin to get a whole new experience on the web by seeing the best of the best.

One last note is the importance that sites like delicious will play in the future for search engines like google. Because of how search engines rank sites by their votes (links from other sites), social bookmarking has become one of the most honest ways to determine whether or not a site is popular and relevant to the search criteria it correlates with. As social bookmarking evolves, there is no doubt that this will play an important role in quality search results. Two of the most popular social bookmarking sites are Delicious.com & Stumbleupon.com.

If, of course you decide to join the realm of social bookmarking, please don’t forget to add your favorite New Mother Gift site, http://www.champagnebaby.com/.