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Introduction
Social bookmarking refers to the practice of saving bookmarks to a publicized Web site and marking it with keywords for the convenience of others and yourself. It becomes useful when there is a multitude of web sites that have piqued your interest and logging them all in your computer’s toolbar becomes impractical. At this point, you can take advantage of organizing these sites together via a bookmarking site in order to engage in them later. The process inadvertently becomes convenient for others as you link the bookmarked sites to keywords for categorization purposes. If for someone reason, you would like to keep your bookmarked sites private and not made available for public use, you may exercise this option. Anyone with access to a computer may take part in social bookmarking.
How the Sites Work
For people who often use the computer and Internet, social bookmarking can become a huge convenience. It is a great way to categorize and resource links to information. The process involves creating links or key word references to the bookmarked sites, so access depends on how people are referring to each page and the information contained within. The bookmarking service indicates who marked the site, how many people also have it bookmarked, and the key words that link to it. Bookmarked sites can be located by person, popularity, or by key word.
Why it is Useful
Users can view how many people have used a particular tag or key word and take advantage of those tags and the resources that it will lead them to. This option creates an individualized culture of constructing key words to define resources referred to as ‘folksonomy.’ Folksonomy allows for unique perspectives and spins to be put on the same resources. Over time, users can see patterns form and can seek out others will similar interests and perspectives. This can be useful for people working in the same industry for instance, who may share a unique angle on a resource than others who seek the same resource.
The Darkside
Much like Wikipedia, bookmarking, is done by ‘amateurs.’ There is no librarian or professional of proper categorization whom oversees how the process is being formulated and implemented. This can lead to confusing or contradictory tags to resources. Good practice for tagging denotes very specific and concise tags. For instance if you were to bookmark a site pertaining to ‘Shakespeare,’ tags could include ‘poet,’ ‘playwright,’ ‘Renaissance,’ ‘plays,’ ‘poems,’ ‘writer,’ and other words that would specifically describe the man. If someone tagged ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for instance, they may never help anyone get to that particular Shakespeare sight if another person searched for the tag, ‘playwright.’ The problem of where to find information may be transferred to how.
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