Social bookmarking: Difference between revisions
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== Introduction == | |||
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The World Wide Web is a vast ocean of knowledge, so vast that it is almost impossible to utilize it efficiently in the absence of various tools. Then came web browser bookmarks. This enabled web surfers to literally - like a book – mark specific pages all over the web for later viewing. How¬ever, as the use of this tool became prevalent, "bookmarkers" found them utterly useless, as it proved to be another confusing pool of knowledge; too many of these bookmarks can populate the person’s browser. Then came social bookmarking. Using this tool, you can organize your bookmarks efficiently so that you could better access them later. While online social bookmarking may be a little more tedious to use as compared to the usual built in bookmarks in our web browsers, social bookmarking is still a useful online web-bookmarking concept, which has maintained its reputation in the cyberspace as it continues to attract new users as well as providers of this technology. | The World Wide Web is a vast ocean of knowledge, so vast that it is almost impossible to utilize it efficiently in the absence of various tools. Then came web browser bookmarks. This enabled web surfers to literally - like a book – mark specific pages all over the web for later viewing. How¬ever, as the use of this tool became prevalent, "bookmarkers" found them utterly useless, as it proved to be another confusing pool of knowledge; too many of these bookmarks can populate the person’s browser. Then came social bookmarking. Using this tool, you can organize your bookmarks efficiently so that you could better access them later. While online social bookmarking may be a little more tedious to use as compared to the usual built in bookmarks in our web browsers, social bookmarking is still a useful online web-bookmarking concept, which has maintained its reputation in the cyberspace as it continues to attract new users as well as providers of this technology. | ||
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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. | 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. | 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. | ||
Revision as of 00:36, 1 April 2009
Introduction
The World Wide Web is a vast ocean of knowledge, so vast that it is almost impossible to utilize it efficiently in the absence of various tools. Then came web browser bookmarks. This enabled web surfers to literally - like a book – mark specific pages all over the web for later viewing. How¬ever, as the use of this tool became prevalent, "bookmarkers" found them utterly useless, as it proved to be another confusing pool of knowledge; too many of these bookmarks can populate the person’s browser. Then came social bookmarking. Using this tool, you can organize your bookmarks efficiently so that you could better access them later. While online social bookmarking may be a little more tedious to use as compared to the usual built in bookmarks in our web browsers, social bookmarking is still a useful online web-bookmarking concept, which has maintained its reputation in the cyberspace as it continues to attract new users as well as providers of this technology.
Definition and Description of Technology
Social Bookmarking is a new way to manage website bookmarks on the web. It allows users to bookmark web pages they may like, and organize them efficiently by the use of keyword tags. This service, which is also quite similar to social networking, also allows its users to discover top websites according to how the users of the network ranked them.
Pioneered by itList, a website which offers public and private website bookmarking, in 1996, social bookmarking created new content on the web since then (Wikipedia). Seeing the profitability of this kind of website, this prompted other developers such as Backflip, Blink, Clip2, ClickMarks, HotLinks and others to enter and develop this kind of website. However, though the early social bookmarking sites were getting good traffic rankings, they eventually closed down due to the lack of “viable models for making money” (Wikipedia). That is, though the idea of these kinds of services in the web would appeal to the people, it lacked a feasible scheme of earning profits since the Internet is not yet that saturated at that time.
The popularity of online bookmarking came back in 2003 when delicious.com, formerly del.icio.us, “pioneered tagging and coined the term social bookmarking” (Wikipedia). With the success of delicious.com, this line of e-business again flourished and websites of the same venture again started entering the World Wide Web. Similar social bookmarking websites such as stumbleupon.com, Furl, Simpy, Citeulike, Connotea, Ma.gnolia and many others began to consume a part of the market share together with del.icio.us.
The logic behind the social bookmarking system is that it works much like that of the built-in “bookmarking button” which we can find in all web browsers available. The only difference is that in social bookmarking we do it online. By signing-up for free with these social bookmarking websites, users can save their bookmarks – which they could also actually do on their browsers – on the web. What prompts internet users to use these websites instead of using the built in “bookmarking device” is that social bookmarking websites offer more than just saving a link on your computer. These sites, aside from their basic service of saving your favorite sites online, also offer many innovative ways of bookmarking such as tagging, ranking and even sharing your bookmarks to other people. Moreover, saving a bookmark in these social bookmarking sites seems to be more efficient and organizes your links better than the latter.
When users stumble upon a website that appeals to them, they can easily save this website on their accounts by clicking on a bookmark (supplied by the website once you sign-up) which directly links its users to the cataloging page. Once clicked, it automatically saves the website you are currently visiting as a bookmark and gives its users the option to tag, change the title or add notes to it. Though it may be a little rigorous, it pays off in the end since the more detail you add to your bookmark (i.e. tags), the better your search results in the future especially when your bookmarks get populated.
Social bookmarking websites did not become popular because of the technical web services they offer to the public. Instead, people have shown more interest in its “additional services” rather than from its core purpose of hosting a free online bookmarking tool. Its classification of being a social networking site and being able to give its users the ability to tag, rank and recommend web pages is what is most applicable to its users.
Also, perhaps one of the most relevant uses of social bookmarking sites is that it can serve as an important and applicable search engine created by humans themselves. That is, a search engine which functions almost like our traditional search engines but with one big difference. Unlike Google which merely uses the artificial “garbage-in, garbage-out” intelligence of its complex computer algorithms, social bookmarking sites use real people –through its thousands of users –to effectively tag websites based on real people’s experiences while browsing through the web. To give an example, if you enter the name “Michael Jackson” in Google, the top two results of your query will give you “Michael Jackson –Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” and “Michael Jackson Tickets and Concerts.” However, if you search that query in a social networking site like delicious.com, you get more relevant and interesting results such as, “The History of Michael Jackson’s Face,” and “Michael Jackson –Smooth Criminal.”
Popularity
The transformation of mere bookmarking to social activity is parallel to the revolution of social bookmarking from a hobby to a necessity. Social bookmarking creates an effective channel for those who want their sites to be popular and get greater publicity. Anyone is free to participate in social bookmarking.
Social Bookmarking gives alternatives to the people in the academe. It provides students and teachers ways to organize and find multiple perspectives on information and resources. Research are made easier since it creates certain connections, providing users access and links of a specific topic that they could not make on their own.
Student groups can establish an account, pass the password or generate unique tags. On the other hand, instructors can create online reading lists through social bookmarking sites. For research papers and academic projects, students can save web pages so that others could access these files too.
If you have a website that you think has relevant content, or you know a site that is one, you can promote this through social bookmarking. Social Bookmarking is on a phenomenal rise. Particularly when web users realize the convenience brought about by this activity. Today, one can easily congregate information from a single source. With its own unique structure, social bookmarking organized the World Wide Web, making it smaller. Web users struggled as they generally have to look at many sites to gather information on a certain subject. Social bookmarking provides order among existing sites, sorting them out according to their content and relevance.
Social Bookmarking is an extra tool in business. It can be used in building better relationships amongst clients and businesses. Businesses can start looking for valuable information for them and use this to show interest to other companies as well. Social Bookmarking offers new resources. With new information present on the internet, social bookmarking helps information to be properly disemminated to the public.
Businesses use links on Digg, Delicious and other social bookmarking sites to optimize their presence in the web. Through this, companies are able to find customers and make business deals without having to negotiate associate deals or link exchanges. Awareness of people regarding the company can be further improved by joining social networking sites. This platform works for every campaign provided content of your website is not sacrificed.
Social bookmarking is a huge part in the business model of marketers. Higher traffic can be put into a landing page when users post their links to social bookmarking sites, thus placing their sites onto higher notches in the search engines. The job of a marketing agent is to coerce prospects to acquire and pay for their company’s product or service. Aside from promotions on social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster or Multiply, companies could also give the public a way to their site. Through this, the larger market is tapped and more customers are reached.
More users mean more information is delivered around the web. Social Bookmarking sites make marketing more convenient for these could aid in selecting the target market; a smaller one would entail more accuracy regarding the target market, reducing costs. Thus, right products are promoted to right individuals.
While the number of social bookmarking sites exploded in the last year, says socialmediaoptimization.com, in the Philippine setting, however, Social bookmarking sites aren’t as popular relative to social networking. According to alexa.com, none of the top social bookmarking sites are part of the Philippines’ top 100 sites.
Users of the Technology
Users of social networks might differ from social bookmarking users particularly in the field of interest. Digg.com, the most popular and notable social networking site (Quantcast), has roughly 25 million users, mostly are male, (65%) and falls within the age 25-34 years old. As Digg becomes part of the mainstream, people in the upper brackets can confidently partake in it, unlike before when mostly people from the masses use it. Digg is the prevailing social bookmarking site. Its audience share is so large relative to everyone else. Just as how MySpace dominates the social networking space, Digg is one of the first choices when it comes to Internet marketing strategies (social media optimization.com). Behind Digg is Propeller.com, with majorly male demographic, and having 62% of its users are from the United States. Its audience is also slightly older, at 45-54 years old. Stumbleupon has almost same demographic as Propeller. A mainstream site is Reddit, with its audience coming from the 35-44 bracket, dominantly male. This could be the reason why social media topics that do well on this site include political, environmental, business and entertainment news. Delicious, probably the mother of all social bookmarking sites was overshadowed by the previous sites but they still belong to the top 5000 sites (Quantcast). Other social bookmarking sites such as Fark, Blinklist, Clipmarks and Shoutwire resemble the same statistic with having more males as their audience.
These demographic data implies that its followers are composed of the male population, ages 35-54 with relatively stable income. It is important to know the demography to be able to identify what is and what is not your target audience. Having knowledge about these data will give hints to what sites you will focus to in promoting a certain product or service. Social bookmarking helps user make their web content travel across the Internet in an effort to bring about “omnipresence”.
Because of the benefits of social bookmarking and its growing popularity, a lot of people are getting hooked to it. The general groups of users of social bookmarking can be classified into two. The first group uses social bookmarking mainly for organizing, sharing their bookmarked sites and socializing. The second group of users uses social bookmarking mainly for the benefit of the traffic that it can generate.
The first group uses social bookmarking to keep their websites in order. They use social bookmarking so that they can easily find the websites that they found interesting whenever they need them again. All they need to do is choose from the tags that they have assigned to the sites and the bookmarking site can easily filter the websites for them. This group also uses social bookmarking to share their information with other people. Take for example in any particular group work, collecting a set of resources, sharing information and collaborating on projects is made easier through social bookmarking. People in the group can take a peek in your sites and use them for the work to be faster.
Through social bookmarking, users are able to meet people and promote themselves. Like-minded individuals find one another and create new communities of users. These people are allowed to express their different perspectives on information and resources through informal organizational structures. If you think of the possibilities, there are also other useful things that social bookmarking can do for its user. It is useful in a sense that “bookmarks allow flexible information management without the limitations of some applications” (Dykeman).
Social bookmarking may be used to organize all kinds of files. If a URL is assigned to a document, social bookmarking may be used to organize any kind of document. Having on-line folders containing valuable information is also made possible and a lot of users benefit from it, greatly helping in information management.
Contact management is also made possible by social bookmarking. Biographical and contact information can be collected from the users through bookmarking their user file pages. Tags that describe these people may then be created and this makes a powerful database of contacts. All that is needed is to type a tag and all the related users that have been bookmarked will appear.
Indirectly, social bookmarking may even encourage people to enhance the content of their sites. They are encouraged to make their information useful to others in order to be visited and bookmarked. This leads us to the second group of users of social bookmarking, these users focus on generating traffic to their sites.
Users would like to generate traffic and be bookmarked for several reasons. One is that they want to be popular on the web and if a website is bookmarked by a lot of users, this would be an obvious sign of popularity. Also, the more bookmarks the post has, the faster it will be ’seen’ by the search engines and the more popular it will get.
Another reason is that users may also want to promote their business. If there are more visitors in the site of a person who has an online business, there is a greater chance of having customers.
How do these users generate traffic and increase their chances of being bookmarked? The users may use Blog Marketing. By being able to get into any of the social sites and read where the trends are going, users get ideas on what to blog or write about. The blogs that they write - after blog marketing - are now interesting to many other users. This increases the chance of their website to be visited because what they have written is based on what's popular. Users may also use link building because this increases the number of links coming in to their site therefore increasing its visitors.
The problem with the second type of users is they tend to focus too much on the traffic they can generate. They forget the social part of social bookmarking. Some of these users bookmark their own sites in order to have a higher rank in bookmarking sites. When the search engine finds their sites, it turns out that their sites weren’t really that good.
With all the possibilities that social bookmarking offers, there are sure to be more and more types of users who will be using social bookmarking to their benefit. Hopefully, these new users won’t forget the social part of social bookmarking.
Providers of the Technology
Delicious
Founded in 2003 by Joshua Schachter, del.icio.us is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, social bookmarking sites today. This site was specifically developed for users to have a venue for storing, sharing and discovering online bookmarks. According to http://delicious.com/about, “Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet”. It also features a “hotlist”, “popular” and “recent” tags for easy access and usage. This allows its users to search and retrieve tags made by other users. This feature also makes it social because users can post and send his/her web bookmarks to other users thereby having a niche where people of the same mindset or interest can communicate. About its design, overall look and appeal, Daniel Nations of www.about.com says:
"Designed on the less-is-more philosophy, it has a rather plain but easy-to-use interface. Del.icio.us does not have the bells and whistles of some of the other social bookmarking sites, but being simple to use and having a strong community makes it one of the best choices for a new user. And having this kind of design makes the site easier to manipulate. Tags can be viewed right away and are presented in a columnar way. This site does not need elaborate design and other fancy nothings to put because its reputation and length of stay in the industry have proven that del.icio.us is a reliable online bookmarking site."
Digg
“Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories” according to Wikipedia.com. This social news website was conceived in 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. From news, images, music to videos, Digg has the right tags that best suits one’s interest. They do not have editors so all of the contents found in the site are user-submitted. These submissions are viewed by users around the world and are digged so that the submission is put on the frontpage of the site. Users do not only submit links that they find interesting but also get to uncover links submitted by other users and start a conversation by making comments and voting. Once a link is viewed for a number of times, it goes up on the list and you get to contribute to the popularity of the item. So content is also a factor to be considered when submitting links. On the other hand, there is also the bury option wherein users can vote off bad items, off-topic and duplicated stories down the line. The site is social in the sense that users can see what other users are digging and burying so people can find good news together. Though the site is supposed to be democratizing web users, it has a number of criticisms on its shoulders. Wikipedia says, “most disparagements are centered on the site's form of user-moderation: users have too much control over content, allowing sensationalism and misinformation to thrive”. And even the existence of the bury option has gained remarks from others saying that it is bound to abuses.
StumbleUpon
According to Wikipedia, “StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles”. It is basically a site where people share videos, photos and web pages. These items are then open for recommendation from other users in the form of “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”. From http://www.stumbleupon.com/technology/, it says: StumbleUpon combines collaborative human opinions with machine learning of personal preference to create virtual communities of like-minded websurfers. Rating websites updates a personal profile (weblog) and generates peer networks of websurfers linked by common interest. These social networks coordinate the distribution of web content, such that users 'stumble upon' pages explicitly recommended by friends and peers. This social content discovery approach automates the "word-of-mouth" referral of peer-approved websites and simplifies web navigation.
StumbleUpon was founded by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd but is now owned by eBay when the developers sold it in 2007. The site works like a recommendation engine. That is, it chooses which webpages to show its users. The users are then given the chance to rate the webpage shown as they like it. Users do not necessarily have to comment on each page. They can just browse the web by pressing the Stumble button.
Profitability
Profitability in the worldwide web comes in a lot of ways. Social bookmarking is one of the many strategies by which users of the web can earn without even going to the office. By being able to store, organize and manage online bookmarks effectively, users can divert traffic to their blogs and sponsored sites easily. Social bookmarking had its roots in the dot-com bubble boom during the mid ‘90s till late ‘90s just before the advent of the 21st century. This dot-com bubble affected computer programmers, developers, IT companies and the like. They say that the breakdown was caused by economic problems and faulty product design among other factors. The problems started when the prices of stocks soared high amidst the fact that the industry is just new. This boom in prices was caused by expectations of investors that stocks will continue to rise in the future. But then again, foresight is not always perfect. The bubble burst, and prices of stock fell dramatically. This was somewhat caused by the failure of the business plans of these dot-com companies. Their plan was to monopolize the market and to expand their customer base rapidly. “Get large or get lost” was their company motto. They launched several public awareness campaigns for the users to get to know the striving industry. These actions translated into high-cost spending incurred by business facilities and aggravated by luxurious vacations and hefty bonuses to the big bosses. Thereby minimizing company profits which led to their fall. The bubble burst was also attributed to spending in preparation for Y2K (2000). This anticipation pushed some investors to sell their stocks and assets for cash for fear of a collapsing industry. That was the time the public became aware that the portfolio of these companies are primarily made up of non-cash assets.
At present, social bookmarking has evolved into a very profitable undertaking. Cliff Posey of about.com wrote an article on how social bookmarking can be of use to promote one’s small business. He said that social bookmarking can be used to increase visibility of bloggers in the websphere. By this, earnings can be increased because of the increased popularity of their blogs and sponsored sites. Some online bookmarking sites provide backlinks and drive traffic to the sites of their users. It can also be a way to promote one’s site in the internet to the people who share the same passion, interests and personality. But one must remember not to flood the site. Users do not like spammers. They are always for good content that is meaningful and worth-reading. Some abuse these sites to earn profits by opening several accounts and voting for the same article again and again. Some post duplicate links and name these with ambiguous and vague tags.
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.
Conclusion
After all we’ve discussed here, it’s best to summarize all that we’ve said in these few words: social bookmarking is really a great way to organize and discover the web. Though it may have bad points and there are a lot of alternatives at the moment, for now it is still the best way for bookmark management. The cloud provides the users with ample space to store all their relevant data - in this case their bookmarks - and presents them to the general public. Popular ones are pushed to the top, giving unaware people a greater chance to discover a part of the World Wide Web that still may be unexplored for them. This also gives web denizens a chance to be someone, because they’re unconsciously tasked with hoarding noteworthy items for their viewing public.
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