Sometimes we don’t even realize how the internet revolution has taken over our otherwise mundane existence. The world has now been reduced to being a true global village and it is true that communication has nothing to do with where people are. One of the main advantages of the Internet is that people have dedicated themselves to spreading their ideas around the world, be it through blogs or other social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter to name a few. When it comes to sites where you have personal space assigned to you and interact with people you know, there is always a limit to sharing your information. This led to the concept of social bookmarking sites which were designed to allow members to submit links (bookmarks) to different sites and related knowledge available on the web. On some of the best social bookmarking sites, we come across links related to anything like a blog post, image, video, or any other type of web page. These sites also use various methods to organize bookmarks, thus creating content-specific pages and sections, making web content easier to find.
As in most cases, this concept led to the creation of several similar sites. Of these, let’s take a look at the top 5 social bookmarking sites:
- www.digg.com
- www.reditt.com
- www.stumbleupon.com
- www.twitter.com
- www.squidoo.com
www.digg.com It literally follows the principle of searching the Internet for news, opinions and reviews. Users find a safe environment to promote their work, brand or organization on this platform, since they have the “My news page” function. This helps them spread their word in a more sophisticated and professional way. You can also “follow” others who share similar interests. Thus, Digg is a forum for like-minded people who submit content and participate in discussions, thus creating a conglomeration of highly educated people. These people believe in constructive criticism as a means to improve through this social bookmarking website.
www.reditt.com is a social bookmarking website dedicated to the newest and most popular information available online. Here users can vote on the links to like or dislike the respective content and this decides the overall popularity of the link. Apart from this practice, one can also submit their own links. Reddit is actually a “site of sites”. It means that this site is made up of several sites, each dealing with different topics, for example, there is a reddit based on science, music, atheism, images, etc. When new users sign in to reditt.com, they subscribe to the most popular topics. But as a user one can subscribe to other topics of interest as well. By “popular” we mean those sites/topics that have the most positive votes from other users. Also, if there are downvotes for a particular topic, its overall score is calculated as the difference between the number of likes and dislikes.
www.stumbleupon.com is a social bookmarking site that mainly focuses on exploring new and interesting information from the world wide web. The creators of this site exude confidence in finding the most useful and interesting websites for the topics required by the user. In order to provide impeccable service, they also regularly receive feedback from their users. They ask the customer to mention their feedback through likes and dislikes, which helps them better understand the customer’s need, and based on the result, they might change their recommendations. One can use this interface to find information about anything one can think of, be it sports, politics, photography, etc.
www.twitter.com It is best known today as a social networking site, but it can also be listed as one of the best social bookmarking sites. In addition to keeping in touch with people like any social networking site, you can post links on various topics of interest. Other users can access these links and share their opinion, discuss relevant topics and spread the word conveniently. The basis of the information shared on Twitter is the news of 140 words called tweets. People can write tweets that can be seen and responded to by those who “follow” them. The uniqueness of this site is that it has a perfect combination of networking and bookmarking, and people tweet on the go. It is being used to express opinions and share photos, videos and other things that help people bond in a more positive way.
www.squidoo.com was created in 2005 with a mission to help writers express their ideas through well-written, original information that can be made available on the web to those who share similar interests. This is a free and open environment that allows users to search for a variety of topics and interact with others who share their enthusiasm for the topic. This social bookmarking website helps to create portfolios of beautiful web pages for users who want to post their works. An interesting incentive here is that if any page performs well, it earns royalties for the writer. This unique feature works as a good motivation for writers to try harder.