Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Social Bookmarking Provides Handy Information

Social bookmarking is the essence of efficiency. It takes a very time consuming task and pares it down into quick easy access. What it is, is the ability to save a bookmark to a website that's public, and then 'tag' it with relevant keywords.

If you're simply 'bookmarking' a site, then you save it for future reference. When you utilize 'social bookmarking', you need to register with a bookmarking site where you can store and edit your bookmarks, and not have to keep them on your computer.

The defining of keywords within your social bookmarking is called by the name - 'folksonomy'. It's the act of using a tag for searching all your resources assigned to that particular tag. Soon your whole community of users develop a 'string' or 'structure' of keywords that define the particular resources.

It opens up the doors to opportunities for like-minded people to share ideas and resources on a certain topic of mutual interest. They soon build a whole community centered around a relevant theme. This can be invaluable in research, as using the search engines could take way more time to find the same information.

The reason the search engines take so much more time, is the way that searches can return something 'similar' to what you're looking for, but not quite there. So you have to glean through your searches in order to find a resource that has exactly what you need. Whereas your social bookmarks put you a couple of clicks away from exactly what you need.

If there's any downside to social bookmarking, it's that not everyone makes proper use of their tags. You may have an interest in, say, 'deer hunting'. And one of your users uses the tag 'hunting', without specifying 'deer', then you may end up on a site for duck hunting, elk hunting, hunting equipment, or any number of things. Specificity in keywords is important.

As you can see, social bookmarking is the essence of efficiency. It saves you lots of time when you need information on subjects that are related to your bookmarked topics. And new information is added daily, as more people tag different sites. It really is a good way to get things done for the busy web surfer. There are many social bookmarking sites out there, like Facebook, del. Icio. Us, Furl it, My Space, Digg, Twitter, and many more. So get started with some bookmarking of your own. You'll soon see the efficiency factor involved.

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