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Sunday, July 22, 2007

What is Social Bookmarking?

The first time I heard about Social Bookmarking was at the World Internet Summit at Singapore. Curious, I took a look at some of the websites offering such functionality when I came back. It opened up to another slice of incredible Internet usability.

Whenever you come across some nifty website, you would bookmark it on the browser. The problem is you cannot take your browser with you (unless you are using a laptop). In fact, many browse the net from the office and home. So, when bookmarking from office, you won’t have the same bookmark available at home and vice versa.

Online bookmarking solves the problem. By storing your bookmarks online, you can access them from any PC anywhere. You will never lose them. That is not all! What makes Social Bookmarking interesting is you can share your bookmarks with anyone on the net (there is an option to make private bookmarks, if so desired). So people with similar interests can see what others are bookmarking. Usually, you would only bookmark sites that are of some value. The same can be said of other surfers. By looking at each other’s bookmarks, you cut down time looking for similar sites. You can save other members’ bookmarks under your online bookmarking account.

While you are at your bookmarking website, you can also see what other members are bookmarking on the fly (well, almost instant!). There are a lot of topics that are being bookmarked. Although you may not be looking for other topics, you may stumble upon some interesting bookmarks done by fellow members of the site.

On this blog, you see the following “Bookmark” button on the left sidebar.

When you click on it, a separate window appears to show the various online bookmarking websites. There are more than 30 such sites listed. So which is the best one? Well, such sites are flourishing and it is hard to say now which will be the best. However, you can actually store your bookmarks on multiple online bookmarking sites and share with different users from different parts of the world. For instance, Mister Wong is very strong in Europe. The site originated in Germany. Recently, they have started an English version for international users. As you can join groups and share links with others on Mister Wong, you can make new friends with similar interests! Now you know why it is called Social Bookmarking?

LegglessBird

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