High Tech Household

In part 1 of this series, we looked at the phenomenon that is social networking, and the various social networks.  In part 2, we looked at Twitter, what it is and how it works.  Here in part 3, we will explore social bookmarking, a way of aggregating the Internet and sharing content.  While the various social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook can all be used to share content and bookmark, there are several sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, and Reddit that are specifically created to share good content from around the net.  Bookmarks end up being ranked based on user recommendations, and tags are added to allow for the indexing and searching of resources.

The Social Bookmarking Sites

Delicious: Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) was the first of the social networking sites.  It simply allows people to link to interesting stories, and the more times a story is linked to, the higher it ranks.  Delicious was bought by Yahoo! recently, and has undergone a face lift.  While still very popular, it goes simply by number of links and doesn’t have the voting features of the others.

Digg: Digg touts itself as a social news aggregator, where its users find and link to news stories.  Digg added the concept of voting to allow the wider Digg community to vote the story up or down.  As stories gain in popularity, they become more visible on Digg, with the most popular stories making it to Digg’s front page.  Digg also acts as a social networking site, allowing users to friend or follow those whose links they generally find interesting.  Some have criticized Digg for becoming too cliq-driven and too slanted in its views, but it remains one of the popular bookmarking sites.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo! Buzz was Yahoo’s answer to Digg,  Yahoo had the advantage of being the first major search engine/aggregation to add social bookmarking functions to its offering.  While featuring many of the features of Digg, Yahoo! Buzz offers the publishers of web content the ability to go in and modify entries linking to their content.

Reddit: Reddit is an open-source social bookmarking site that performs many of the same functions of Digg.  Where Reddit differs, however, is the way that it responds to user’s criticism and feedback of its features, and has a robust discussion community that debates and talks about the stories posted.

Stumbleupon: StumbleUpon is a different kind of social bookmarking site.  The idea of stumble upon is that, when browsing the web and funding an interesting article/page/etc., you mark it.  Then, users go to the StumbleUpon site (or use the StumbleUpon toolbar), and browse sites that others have stumbled on.  StumbleUpon is different in that it is not limited to news/content sites but can be any interesting Internet site or page.

Technorati: Technorati is a social bookmarking site specifically focused on the blogging community.  Blogs create their own feeds, where their blogs latest stories are automatically posted in Technorati.  Users can also flag blogs or stories that they follow, or find interesting.  Technorati is more of a blog search engine, which popularizes entries based on tags and user voting.

Whatever site you choose to try, Social Bookmarking gives you an option to explore the wider Internet, and find content that one would not have found otherwise.  Some have compared Social Bookmarking to an online Reader’s Digest, but with the users/readers as the editors.