In the age of Web 2.0, people are no longer looking to a single source for recommendations for information and entertainment on the ‘Net. It’s far better to have a collective recommendation, ranked by hundreds of like-minded people. How does it work? Read on.
Have you ever seen additions to online articles that say “share this article” or “submit to Digg”, and wondered what they mean? These are links to social bookmarking sites. So, what is social bookmarking? Allow me to explain.
In the post dot-com age, the industry is full of buzz terms like ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘productise’. People are turning away from television and the mainstream media as a source of information and entertainment. The Internet has become the favoured conduit and increasingly, people are no longer looking to a single source (such as a search engine) for recommendations on information and entertainment on the Net. Raw search engine results are missing any kind of “recommendation” element, to help us make a decision about what to access. And we are increasingly time-poor as content consumers. In the milliseconds after you load a page of listings, it’s far better to have a collective recommendation, ranked by dozens of like-minded people, who share your values or world view. This is what social bookmarking provides.
In short, social bookmarking allows you to suggest something interesting to people who share your values, lifestyle and attitudes. In kind, you can access a selectively ranked list of interesting material that’s suggested and compiled daily by your peers. With social bookmarks, such focused groups of people can come together and increase their knowledge, or just share entertaining multimedia snippets. Rather than just forwarding an email to your peer group, or posting on a forum page, the social bookmark opens up the audience for your contribution to a far larger pool of interested people. If your contribution strikes a nerve, it may go on to be read by thousands of people, who share an interest in it. They may also remember your screen name, and consider your post with greater esteem the next time you make a submission.
PC Authority hosts links to the social bookmarking and news sites Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Delicious, Technorati, StumbleUpon and Slashdot.
What is Digg? Founded in technology and science related story links, Digg is one of the most popular social news sites on the web. Digg’s unique value lies in the readers voting to promote or demote submitted stories of the day. In this way, stories that strike a chord with many people quickly rise to prominence. Stories can be ranked “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, but users can vote to “bury” inappropriate or incorrect stories. This system has been recently criticised, because users are apparently burying stories that don’t fit with their world view, creating something of a battle of ideologies on the site.
What is Reddit? Reddit also hosts social news links like Digg, most notably science and technology stories, also allowing users to make comments on other’s comments on socially bookmarked links, and even vote on the validity these comments, a sort of “double-blind democracy” to battle perceived meddling by users with personal or political agendas.
What is Netscape.com? Netscape.com is currently a vibrant social news site. Famous as an alternative non-Microsoft web browser in the 1990s, Netscape quietly acquiesced in the browser war against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and was acquired by AOL (America OnLine), the infamous beacon of beginner-level Internet users the world over. Netscape remnants spawned the open-source Mozilla project, which is linked to the current FireFox web browser. Of late, Netscape has seen a resurgence with its social news site and version 9.0 beta released in Q2 2007. The site is fed by “Scouts” who submit interesting links and controlled by content “Anchors” who selectively edit the listings. As on Digg, Netscape users can vote on stories and opt to “sink” ones that aren’t appropriate.
What is Del.icio.us? Pronounced "delicious", this is a social bookmarking site, owned by Yahoo! It allows users to share and save bookmarks to interesting sites or articles, and lets users browse the bookmark collections of other users. It’s also useful for storing your own bookmarks in an easily accessible location on the Internet. Although fundamentally a web-based bookmarking service, Del.icio.us’ power comes from how users categorize web pages and how they reference each others’ profiles.
What is Technorati? Technorati is a site that references the “citizen media”, meaning Internet user-generated blogs, opinion-based article sites penned by enthusiastic volunteer writers. This “Live Web” is updated so regularly, according to Technorati, that you’d find a new update on various blogs around 18 times a second, if you could track things that quickly. Blog rankings on Technorati are based on the number of links from other blogs in a six-month period. The complete list of links to a given blog is retrievable through the Technorati search, according to their website.
What is StumbleUpon? Owned by eBay, StumbleUpon is a social recommendation system that allows users to rank sites with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” by clicking on a special web browser toolbar. With it, users can also choose to find semi-random recommended stories by clicking the “Stumble!” button. The selection is driven by sites that your friends and like-minded “Stumblers” have approved. StumbleUpon has over three million users.
What is Slashdot? Slashdot is a technology news and rumours site with a relatively long and respected heritage as a source of information on the Internet. Slashdot has a fervent and lucid core of readers who actively contribute to lively discussions on hot stories and technology topics of the day. An editor-moderated ranking system ensures that the most interesting comments and message board posts are listed more prominently.
PC Authority supports social bookmarks at the bottom of feature stories. To use the social bookmark links, visit the target page and create a free account (for convenience, you can typically set the site to “remember you” to avoid regularly typing in your username and password. Then, when you’re viewing the story page, you can simply click one of the links (as seen below) and the story that you’re reading will be submitted to the site (you may have to log in). Once your link is submitted, it's part of the exciting social news rollercoaster. Other readers may bury, denigrate or sink it. However, if you've read the audience correctly, it'll skyrocket to popularity stardom, carrying your screen name with it.
Read the next page for analysis of the popularity explosion in social bookmarking. Why is it hot right now?