Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Understanding Social Bookmarking

At one point or another, you may have come across the words “tag” or “bookmark” while browsing through the Internet. These terms are actually part of a bigger system known as social bookmarking. If you still don’t have any idea regarding how it works, you better start learning a thing or two about it.

Learn The Essentials

In order to get a clearer picture of how this ingenious scheme works, think of the numerous times you have bookmarked a Web site that you intend to visit again at a later time. Social bookmarking is in some way similar to that. The main difference, though, is that when you bookmark a Web page using your browser, you may only access the site using the same computer.

In social bookmarking, you are actually tagging a Web page and saving it in another Web site. Since the method is carried out online, you may easily access the bookmarked page using any computer unit. On top of that, you may also share the tags with friends and other members of the social network with no trouble at all.

Not only does it allow you to tag your favorite Web sites and share them with other people, but it also gives you a chance to take a look at what other members of the network have found appealing enough to bookmark. The majority of social bookmarking sites on the Web also lets you scan items based on recently added or most popular bookmarks, and tags by category (i.e. technology, shopping, politics, sports, news, etc.).

Discover The Benefits

At present, a lot of people have started utilizing social bookmarking sites as intelligent search engines. Rather than using a standard search engine to search for a particular topic, you can simply narrow down your search and get hold of only the most useful links available. For instance, imagine yourself browsing the Web for helpful resources about social shopping. If you use a traditional search tool, it will probably generate hundreds—or even thousands—of search results.

Now, picture yourself making use of the so-called intelligent search engine. Chances are, it will most likely turn up only a few—yet useful—search results. This way, you won’t have to skim through pages after pages of results, and you’ll definitely afford yourself with tons of extra time.

Consequently, what started out as a system of sharing tags has truly developed into a pool of convenient social search engines. Members of social bookmarking sites no longer need to browse through a plethora of search results in order to locate a speck in the vast universe of information. You simply have to choose a tag or category that interests you and be routed to the most popular Web sites. Now, isn’t that easy?

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