Relevance of Social Bookmarking

   Technology, indeed, made a huge impact on our lives & it significantly changed the way we humans live over the recent years.  And while it continues to evolve over the years, we see new changes that continue to contribute to our very existence & it enables us to live comfortable lives, while at the same time, constantly learn new bits & pieces of information that will give us added knowledge. And with the advent of social networking, computer users are now engrossed with a new method called social bookmarking.

    According to a definition by Wikipedia, it is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

     In a nutshell, social bookmarking is like tagging. The only difference is that, instead of tagging (or placing a name that is associated to a certain topic), the pieces of information that is being tagged are websites, forums, & educational material that are related to that keyword.

    As explained further by Wikipedia, 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 can become an effective tool in spreading important information, especially if companies would go further in promoting their products or services via the Web. The users themselves serve as promoters whenever they tag a certain product or service, since the user will be putting either a website or a page wherein important information on that product or service will become available. For the end-users themselves, sharing important information, whether on their facebook status messages or tweets, will be much easier and will help boost site visits. The only downside that is being seen with social bookmarking is its' tendency to be used as spam. Nonetheless, social bookmarking brings forth more information needed by those who are looking for answers on a simple question, or merely just for the sake of fun. Pretty soon, we'll be getting more than what we've bargained for, thanks to this new technology.