Have you seen the social bookmarking buttons on almost every website you’ve visited but are intimidated by the available choices and wonder how to get started? This guide aims to help you!
social bookmarking buttons on BBC
The BBC have done this exceptionally well and included a link “what are these?” to explain to their visitors what these links are and how to use them. What unfortunately is not made clear is how to get started in social bookmarking.
What Is Social Bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is a fancy term for saving links to webpages online where others can see them. You may well ask, why do that? Well, by saving your bookmarks online and sharing them with others you vouch for the quality and interestingness of those webpages. This allows you to connect with other people who have similar interests and see their links which may well interest you too. Sound simple? It is.
Where Should I Start In Social Bookmarking?
With so many options the question of where to start is a very justified one! There is no single answer that satisfies everyone’s needs or interests. In future posts we will delve into the merits and pitfalls of each of these social bookmarking sites, for now we’ll concentrate on how and where to get started.
For the novice or virginal social bookmarker StumbleUpon is probably the easiest and most fun introduction to social bookmarking. Essentially it offers not only a way to collect and categorise (tag) your bookmarks, but also lets you discover new pages you might be interested in. When you sign up, you chose topics that interest you, then when you “stumble” you are shown pages relevant to those categories.