Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking allows storage & sharing of links to websites & webpages.

About

Welcome to the world of Social bookmarking.

Most users are familiar with storing private bookmarks to their favourite websites and webpages. This usually involves storing the title of the page and the URLs with a web browser. But did you know there's a growing community of people who share their bookmarks with one another?

Social bookmarking involves storing and publishing links to webpages using an online social bookmarking service. Bookmarks are usually tagged with words chosen by the user (also known as folksonomy). Summary notes about each bookmark can also be stored (optional).

Others can view your bookmarks (unless you make them private), search the entire social bookmark site, and network with you. By storing social bookmarks, you will also automatically create feeds (a news stream) which you and others can import into blogs, newsreaders, aggregators, etc. So, social bookmarking has many potential applications.

All of these features make social bookmarking an excellent way to get started with "learning web2.0". Experienced social bookmarkers are often also amazed to learn how much more is possible, such as tag clouds, tag renaming, feeds, social bookmark networks, advanced searching, etc.

To get started, we recommended the introductory video below, then setting up a del.icio.us account and the del.icio.us buttons for your browser.

Happy bookmarking!

Video

Here's CommonCraft's short video on social bookmarking:

Try it out: del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is the largest and best known of the social bookmark sites.

Example bookmark (image)

Getting started with del.icio.us (8 min video):

To see live examples of how contributors to this wiki are using del.icio.us, visit their sites:
James Neill - e.g., see URLs tagged socialbookmarking
Andrew Read

Tip: To get the most out of del.icio.us, install the del.icio.us buttons

Risks

Providing any information about yourself on the web involves some degree of risk. These risks can be managed by individuals weighing the risks and benefits for themselves before deciding how much they should disclose through social bookmarks. The main method of managing risks with social bookmarking is by choosing whether to share each individual bookmark or not. If in doubt, mark a bookmark as private.

Social bookmarks which you have chosen to share can be viewed by anyone including your family members, existing and potential employers, and law enforcement agencies. The items you share can reveal characteristics about you that you may not want others to know - for example, you may bookmark sites which reveal your political and religious beliefs, your attitudes to socially contentious issues such as use of drugs or pornography, and your personal likes and dislikes.

Users of Firefox need to be aware that Firefox can be made to synchronise with social bookmark sites and saving a bookmark in Firefox can automatically add that bookmark to your social bookmark site. This is an extremely useful feature within Firefox but users need to be aware that it is happening.

Social bookmarks could potentially be used by advertisers to profile you and target advertising to your individual needs. This is not necessarily a bad thing but individuals need to be aware of this.

Social bookmarks can also be used by criminals and can help with identify theft.

These risks can be managed by thinking carefully before choosing to share particular bookmarks.

One way to help minimise several of these risks is to create an non-identifying user name for bookmarking purposes, e.g., http://del.icio.us/USERNAME. Other people may wish to choose to use an identifying user name (and sometimes one which they also use with other web2.0 services, which helps others to find them).

Resources