Editing Social bookmarking (section)

== Analysis ==

Social bookmarking has its pros and cons, which will be discussed in this section. As with every technology, social bookmarking yields its own benefits; the greatest of which is that this is a really good way to organize places in the web where one may frequent. All social bookmarking sites allow users to arrange sites with a common category, such as automotive or science, and be able to compare one to another, vis-a-vis. Aside from organizing the places they frequent, they also provide the user with one depository of website lists, because all the data they gather is stored in the cloud. So they wouldn’t have to bookmark each website at every terminal they encounter; they just go to the bookmarking site and get the list there.

	Another good thing possessed by social bookmarking that ordinary bookmarks didn’t have before is tagging: the act of labeling anything with keywords. Now this provides the user with an even greater means of organizing their bookmarks, because any website with the same keyword or tag will be grouped together. Any website with more than one tag could in theory be placed in under more than one category.

	Still another is the social element: people with common interests and common tags can see other users’ bookmarks, and discover similar websites. This feature provides the users of social bookmarking with an opportunity to give back to the community, and also gain from giving back. All their bookmarks are free to be seen by other users, and therein lies a chance for them to discover new websites that can’t be found through the first few pages of a Google search. Aside from this, bookmarks in common with them will not only be pushed forward to the front of the page, but also provides the start of their conversations and possible friendships.

	Another good point presented by social bookmarking is that it gives a mutual benefit; people get to learn more about the topics that they like through discovering links at the website, and the website owners themselves benefit from the indirect advertisement that these websites provide. Consider an unusual site that just talks about pictures of dead tree trunks. By showcasing this to enough people would be able to push your site up the ranks of similar websites that also talk about dead and decaying organisms, and give you a unique edge over competitors: people like you better. You will not only be a more active blogger of dead trees, but you’d also be one of the popular bloggers of dead trees.

	Perhaps another good point of social bookmarking is the variety, each actually providing a different kind of service though all fall under social bookmarking. For example would be to compare digg and StumbleUpon. Digg focuses on all their users as a whole by providing a page of popular links for today, and users can narrow them down to their favorite categories. StumbleUpon on the other hand focuses on the individual by utilizing browser integration. When a user explores the internet and finds a website they particularly like, clicking on the “I like this.” button automatically bookmarks it on their browser, and sent to the cloud, free for all to see. Now if they would like to get random pages, they click the “stumble!” button, and the site chooses a random website given their favorite category.
	
With the vastness of the internet, social bookmarking tools certainly help an individual in organizing and storing information gathered from the internet. Social bookmarking functions just like what a real bookmark would do – to mark the places you intend to retrieve for future uses. Moreover, it is “social” because of the fact that it lets you share your bookmarks with others so they too can add it up. At present, social bookmarking is has been a growing trend among internet users. According to Damianos, Griffith and Cuomo, “Social bookmarking is one of the latest in an increasing trend of ‘pop-tech’, social software that has been proliferating on the Internet and quickly gaining popularity.” The question is, why?

Prior to the introduction of social bookmarking, people use their browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox) to store URLs of helpful web resources intended to be retrieved in the future through features like ‘Favorites’ and the like. However, going about these stored URLs is tedious since going about the list or folders takes up time and there is no proper organization of the bookmarks. Moreover, these web resources could only be accessed in the same computer which was used to store the URLs. Social bookmarking is anything but those.

An advantage of social bookmarking is it allows a person to manage his/her bookmarked web sites. Commonly, a personal account with the bookmarking service is required. Afterwards, the individual could store the bookmarked pages to his account.  These bookmarked pages could be assigned into different categories to the discretion of the user.

An added feature of social bookmarks is the use of tags. Tags let users describe the site he/she marks. According to Millen, et al, “These tags allow users to organize and display their collection with labels that are meaningful to them. Furthermore, multiple tags allow bookmarks to belong to more than one category, a limitation of the traditional hierarchically organized folders found in most Web browsers.” A user could easily retrieve the desired web site without going over the long list by using the tags. There are also search features for some sites such as del.icio.us that enables users to search within their own tags.
Also, according to Fichter, one advantage of social bookmarks is that it is “available anytime from any online computer (ref desk, office, home, laptop).” Indeed, one can access it in any computer not necessarily the one which was used to store the web resources. Lakin adds up that “Often, the online services for bookmarking are open source and free” and “By building community profiles, users with common interests discover one another and resources they might not have otherwise come across, even after endless keyword selections and clicks on a search engine.” This is where a significant feature of social bookmarking – being ‘social’ - plays huge part.

According to Millen, et al, “The second significant characteristic of these social bookmark applications is the social nature of their use. While bookmark collections are personally created and maintained, they are also typically visible to others. As a result, users benefit by getting pointers to new information from others while at the same time getting a general sense of other people's interests.” The concept of sharing bookmarks to others makes many people discover useful sites, which are not known to them. This building of community between users also serves another purpose. According to Doctor, “Social bookmarking also helps determine if a particular site is trendy and useful or not through a decision made by the community. How this works is that any user can share a bookmark, and the larger community makes a collaborative decision as to whether that bookmark is cool and useful or not. This helps make it easier for other users to navigate through the overwhelming amount of Web-based information.” This acts like a website ranking characteristic based on users’ perceptions of the web sites.

But just like any other things, these advantages are also paired up with several disadvantages. Though social bookmarking proves to be a powerful tool, it is continuously evolving to meet the needs of the users. According to Doctor, “The lack of standards for tag structures, such as capitalization, singular vs. plural, as well as other similar issues, in social bookmarking makes it susceptible to mistagging. This can be caused by misspelling certain words, by tagging certain subjects using keywords that have two or more meanings, by tagging websites and/or Web pages with unclear tags caused by synonym-antonym confusion, or by using unorthodox and too “personalized” tags that other users will not be able to understand or decipher what the tag is about.” Currently, no standards were set on the process of tagging website resources. The intentions of users’ in these bookmarking services should not be set aside also. Hackers and spammers always pose threats to internet security. Doctor adds again that “Aside from these problems, social bookmarking is also susceptible to corruption and collusion due to its popularity.” 

In addition, Fichter states that the disadvantages of social book marking are security, privacy and reliability. She asks “How private are your private bookmarks? What personal information do you have to provide? Will the service be up? Will they shut down and you’ll lose all your links?” These are important questions that we also need to consider as we use social bookmarking tools. Lastly, according to Lakin, “Although the organization of social bookmarking is flat with no folder fuss, the tools are still evolving and not all are user-friendly. Also, people create the tags. As a result, they create a level of meaning and context not found in current search engines.”The way people create tags reflect behaviours and personalities that may be, to an extent, inclusive of certain groups of people that others could not relate to.

Still, given these differences, what lies ahead for the future of social bookmarking is very promising. It can serve as a powerful aid to students, teachers, researcher and fortunately, to everyone who uses the internet. These disadvantages may be present for the mean time, temporarily, as social bookmarking evolves and improves over time.

Another bad point is that adding tags can be next to impossible, given that our generation is lacking the certain perseverance we all used to share. Because all the tags have to be manually placed by the user, someone with around 1000 bookmarks will need to have a lot of time to provide for all of them. Another even more tragic point is that there isn’t a uniform system of keywords to be used. Given a website about cars, www.autoblog.com for example, can be given the tag cars, car, automotive, auto, vehicle, vehicles, and the list may actually go on. With this lack of uniformity, users can be even more confused with the websites presented to them, leading to information overload.

	A more sinister part of social bookmarks is the chance for them to be exploited. Because a bookmark’s popularity is based on how many people have the same site bookmarked, with enough cash, you could tell a group of people to bookmark your site so that it could jump to the front page, gaining more potential hits. Even if this notion may seem entirely improbable, the thought alone may spark one’s curiosity, and should lead to developments negating them.

	The group suggests several points to as added benefits or to counteract the bad aspects of social bookmarking, the first of which would be to provide the users with a standard set of tags to be used. Again with Autoblog.com, they could just group all similar tags under the “supertag” cars. This is to avoid confusion or can give the user more power to generalize. In line with this, the bookmarking sites can also provide data spiders to to check the content of the website, so that when they add a bookmark, there are tags automatically placed there for the user’s benefit. Then they won’t have to type anything, given that they would agree with the site’s suggestions for the bookmark’s tags. Another suggestion would be browser integration. Just because the bookmark sites are at the cloud doesn’t mean they can’t be tied down anymore through the user’s browser. This eliminates the need for the browsers to keep their bookmark feature, and can give them the opportunity to develop other features, leaving the bookmark organization to the experts. Still another suggestion would be for the bookmarking sites to give incentives for those instant hits; the websites that could become popular overnight. This will coerce website owners to give their sites more pizazz, add more frequent updates, and will again benefit both the browser and the owner.

	If the user wouldn’t like to utilize this wonderful technology, the group can also point out some alternatives that are in the bookmark management ‘market’. There are certain web browsers such as Firefox that already have tags as a way of organizing their bookmarks. As explained earlier though, these still must be manually placed at every link. Also, Safari and Chrome have a Top Sites page, wherein the most frequently visited websites for that particular terminal are displayed in thumbnails for the users benefit; the essence of a bookmark. However, all these will still lack the over-the-cloud syncing that social bookmarking is providing for their users.