What Is Social Bookmarking?
What is Social Bookmarking? Social Bookmarking is a way
of storing, organizing, sharing and searching the bookmarks
of web pages on the Internet as well as tagging them with
personalized keywords.
What are bookmarks? In the realm of the World Wide Web,
bookmarks are defined as stored web address or webpage
locations for quick and easy access through cross platform
web browsers. The term URL or Uniform Resource Locator also
refers to webpage locations or webpage addresses. However,
URLs do not always return an actual page or filename.
Nevertheless, it is still currently being used due to the
popularity of the term.
In order for one to create a collection of social bookmarks,
one must be registered or must be a member of a social
bookmarking website. This site allows the member users to
store multiple bookmarks, add tags, and use keywords for
each bookmark. This means members can assign whether certain
bookmarks would be shared to the public, or would be only
for private and personal use.
These bookmarking sites also allow each member user to
explore the site by searching for resources. They can filter
their searches by tags, keywords, people and personalities,
public bookmarks, and other ideas and formats that the other
members have created and saved on the site.
Just a few years ago, several social bookmarking sites were
introduced into the Internet industry. Bookmarking websites
such as del.icio.us and Furl were first heard of. The need
for social bookmarking arose when users began to recognize
the need to share certain resources with others. This is
especially true in the case of students and faculty
personnel who need web citations and resource links to be
shared especially when working on research studies and
theses.
Social Bookmarking have opened new ways of organizing and
managing information and categorizing resources. On social
bookmark sites, members may assign or label tag names or
keywords to their bookmarked resource. The result is a
user-directed “amateur” technique of classifying
information.
Since social bookmarking sites indicate profiles of the
members who created each bookmark, members may create social
connections with other members depending on their topic of
interests. Members may be able to view how many others have
tagged a certain resource, and for how many times certain
keywords were used.
Social bookmark sites may also have the capability to show
members the most tagged bookmark, popular searches, who,
what and where a certain bookmark was used, created and
resourced. With this, the community of member users will
develop over time a unique structure of keywords to define
resources – this concept is now referred to as Folksonomy.
Social Bookmarking is a significant tool that has given
users the chance to communicate and put across the Internet
their differing perspectives on information and resources by
use of informal organization structures. The process of
Social Bookmarking allows compatible individuals to discover
one another and to create new social communities of
individuals who continue to inspire and shape the ongoing
evolution of folksonomies.
Using Folksonomy-based systems and tools in the field of
research have truly helped a lot of users to take advantage
of the insights of other users to find information related
to their own topics. A given example would be an individual
searching for information on driving cars while another
member may find it useful to let you in on information about
car repairs. It is an entire new topic but in essence may be
related to what is being looked for. Social bookmarking can
take an individual research into new levels and directions
because of the participation of other members.
There may also be disadvantages to social bookmarking. This
is particularly geared towards sites designed and manned by
mostly amateurs or non-professionals. This is because the
way resources will be tagged, organized and managed may not
be as accurate in definitive terms. The disadvantage is the
poor or loose use of tag names or keywords may bring about a
great risk of a skewed view or perception of any particular
topic.
In addition, since social bookmarks are created, done, and
subsequently maintained on a social bookmarking website, it
could both be an advantage and disadvantage to the user. It
is an advantage in a sense that the user may be able to
retrieve resources and information with mobility. On the
other hand, it can be a disadvantage in terms of the user
being pushed to periodically maintain and update the data
stored and the profiles used for the site.
Moving on, social bookmarking is quite an easy concept to
grasp. A lot of people are now making use of this new
concept and technology. They are even applying the same
concept to their own software applications, multimedia
files, and email. The emergence of new concepts and ideas
such as social bookmarking have created major implications
as to how new Internet and social communities are being
formed. Social Bookmarking may in the future change the way
we store and manage data and information.
|
