What is Social Bookmarking?
So, you’ve noticed the five 'bookmark' links which appear on our news stories:
These links are a selection of 'social bookmarking' websites. There are plenty of these springing up on the web, but these are amongst the more prominent.
Social bookmarking sites allow you to store, tag, and share links across the web. Unlike your browser “favourites”, social bookmarking allows you to share your bookmarks with your friends, or access them from any computer you happen to be using. Once you become a member of a social bookmarking site, you can save the link of any web page you find, and create lists of useful or interesting content. Then you can share your lists with your friends, other people with similar interests, or anyone at all.
When 'bookmarking' a page, it's a good idea to add keywords - often called 'tags' to describe the page, so others can search and find the link. Many social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg) will rank pages in order, according to the number of people who have bookmarked them. in this light, a bookmark is like a vote: the more bookmarks a page has, the more popular it is deemed to be.
Our news stories each have links to Del.icio.us, Digg, Newsvine, NowPublic, and Reddit, so you can easily bookmark, and therefore recommend discussions that you like, or deem to be of interest. So how do you use them?
Firstly, you'll need to register (for free!) with at least one of the above sites. It doesn't matter which you use, but each has a slightly different set of features. It's best have a look at each, and then make a decision. Then, once you have registered, you can begin bookmarking.
If you come across a news story which you find interesting and want to save for future reference, just click the link below the entry. When you bookmark a story, a link to it will be saved on your profile within your chosen social bookmarking site. Of course, you can bookmark any web page you like, whether it's on this site or anywhere else on the web.
Good luck, and have fun!