Why aren't you bookmarking me?
Feb
23
Written by:
2009/02/23 09:49 AM
Social Bookmarking seems to be the lifeblood of blogging. If you are a blogger, you get some kind of satisfaction when someone bookmarks your blog or post. But I find that this culture is a bit lacking in South Africa.
So what is social bookmarking then? From Wikipedia, "Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of meta data.
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users."
Social bookmarking then is a vote on a blogger, web page, post, content. The more bookmarks your web page gets is an indication that others like and enjoy what you write. I's a vote of confidence.
But, I wonder what this culture is like in South Africa. We seem to be very relaxed when it comes to social bookmarking. Yes we read the blogs and articles, but that's as far as it goes. We don't take the time to reward a blogger or web page with our vote of confidence. Social Bookmarking has literally taken over the web. But has it had the same attraction for users in South Africa.
But not only is Social Bookmarking a benefit to others, but it is a benefit to you. It helps organise sites, documents, articles, blog posts that are important to you. Information that you feel you will need again. I have often found that I when I do find a good site, a good article, nine times out of ten I will need to come back to it again. Without A bookmark, I have to search all over again. Searching again, does not guarantee that I will find the web page again.
Social Networking is the in thing at the moment. Social Bookmarking shows others what type of sites you frequent, what articles you're reading. It gives you a common ground to discus topics on. If you are a web developer, you will most likely frequent a lot of web design and programming sites. Maybe you are a photographer. By bookmarking sites and having your site bookmarked, you share with others what's important to you. You also have the ability to see what other in your industry are interested in.
All these sites are free, and registering on them takes a few minutes. Some, such as del.icio.us, install a few buttons on the toolbar of your browser. To add a new site to your list of bookmarks, all you need do is click on the button and type a few keyword tags into the box that pops up. At others, such as muti, you need to submit the site by typing its url (web address) into a form; within a few seconds your submission is visible and other users can begin adding their votes.
Here is a list of the more popular Social Bookmarking Sites:
And a few South African Social Bookmarking Sites:
So the question is, do you bookmark sites that you visit, that you find interesting? Do you have bookmark buttons on you site to encourage others to bookmark you? Perhaps you think Social bookmarking is a waste of time? What are your thoughts?
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